Putin goes on to say

”Our proposal is not to freeze the conflict, like how the west wants it, but to end it. I repeat, this is not to freeze the conflict, but for its final completion.”

        • CasualPenguin@reddthat.com
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          14 days ago

          No mic drop intended, just replying fast to a few people.

          I guess before I figure out which way to expand on it I need a baseline, do you believe history will look fondly on Putin?

          • No, I don’t. He represents the worst of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He runs a staunchly conservative, queerphobic nation that’s put a number of my friends in real material danger simply for existing, and they can scarcely tell me about it because of how tightly the state cracks down on that

            How history will view him depends on how the war shakes out and who you’re asking and why. He’s been a leader - or around the reins of power - for a very long time, and I don’t see him as innocent or blameless in the events that bring us to the invasion. This was a collision thirty odd years in the making, and Great Man Theory fucking sucks as an analysis of history

      • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        14 days ago

        This doesn’t just have to do with Putin, there is no reality where any Russian president would accept Ukraine joining NATO. That has been clear since the fall of the Soviet Union.

        • true, Russia could have elected Karl Marx or Jesus Christ or Taylor Swift as president and they would still have responded to american provocation in similar ways. Putin is a conservative, homophobic oligarch, but just about anyone else in that position would have responded similarly to the threat of NATO nukes on their border and nazis ethnically cleansing speakers of their language. If Mexico decided to join BRICS and host Chinese nukes and militias started massacring english-speakers and anyone with american citizenship or ancestry, we would go full Iraq Invasion style and turn the entire country into rubble and irradiated craters and corpses, meanwhile Russia waited like 2 years after invading to even start targeting the electrical grid and other infrastructure.

          • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            14 days ago

            I’m not great at geography, so when I recently saw a map that showed how some of the Western missiles could reach Moscow from Ukrainian territory…that was when it really hit me how Ukraine potentially joining NATO is basically the Cuban missile crisis except much worse for Russia. Yeah, make fun of me all you want for not taking the time to really look at a map.

        • CasualPenguin@reddthat.com
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          14 days ago

          Whether or not any Russian president would have accepted it doesn’t justify invading another country with the intent of claiming the land as their own, nor does it make them any less of the aggressor.

          • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            14 days ago

            You seem to be giving a green light to invade to every NATO-aligned state, including Ukraine. But hey, prove me wrong and tell us how every state that invaded, for example, Iraq and Afghanistan should answer for their crimes.

            But no, if the gang of states that keep invading everywhere around the world and killing millions are encroaching on your borders after promising to not expand towards you, you have a reason to act against them.

            Also, care to tell us what makes you qualified to tell the rest of the world how it should resist you?

          • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            14 days ago

            Turns out that diplomacy doesn’t work like “we are the USA and we will dictate the terms always and forever”, it was only a matter of time before someone put their foot down.

            That’s not a moral judgement, that’s just how shit happens.