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Putin & Russia

SpurMeUp said:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine...all totally fuked nations now. You'd think we'd learn.
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Bashar al-Assad Is a particularly nasty piece of work and needed removing.
He knew he was on his way out and enter the king of roosterroaches, Putin.
 
StephenH said:
Bashar al-Assad Is a particularly nasty piece of work and needed removing.
He knew he was on his way out and enter the king of roosterroaches, Putin.
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Assad family's regime was brutal (I'm not sure he was himself, a trained Dentist who's taken the hippocratic oath). It was or is a police state. But, how many people were killed and displaced!? How much suffering and misery does "he needed removing" unleash on people and how can anyone justify it? The country has been flattened, millions displaced etc.

Not to mention ISIS were the only viable opposition who could take over the country. The West and Russia have both been hit by islamic terrorists and both prefer Assad's police state to ISIS.
 
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SpurMeUp said:
There is open data published by the US on how much they spent (billions of $s) in Ukraine. The right wing in the US still believed in the cold war. @LostMango I'm not sure its accurate to say it was one-way traffic. If Russia started funding Mexico cartels or the IRA would we put up with it?

This is from 2014 but is a 'tad more ballanced' ;): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger Okay its a leftist stance, but most of what Pilger writes stacks up. The US have a history of changing nation's leaders that they don't like. Was Ukraine any different?
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One-way traffic is a bit much probably but I think Georgia is different to Ukraine. From my time in Tblisi my understanding was that the US weren't funding a small minority opinion to try and cause issues. The majority of Georgians wanted to escape from the Russian Sphere of Influence and want to be part of the Western Block to have some muscle behind their aspirations and some security in their decisions (although they saw the futility of that with South Ossetia). I think Ukraine is a different situation, more evenly split, that the West tried to pull away and Russia were determined to dominate to give themselves better Black Sea access.
 
Lost Mango said:
One-way traffic is a bit much probably but I think Georgia is different to Ukraine. From my time in Tblisi my understanding was that the US weren't funding a small minority opinion to try and cause issues. The majority of Georgians wanted to escape from the Russian Sphere of Influence and want to be part of the Western Block to have some muscle behind their aspirations and some security in their decisions (although they saw the futility of that with South Ossetia). I think Ukraine is a different situation, more evenly split, that the West tried to pull away and Russia were determined to dominate to give themselves better Black Sea access.
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Post Soviet Union Russia was happy to work with the west. But something changed about 10 years ago. Jack Straw the then Forign Minister (or Home Secrety?) alluded to it in a recent BBC documentry saying words to effect: looking back we were possibly too strong with Russia, it was too much at once moving these countries away, and Russia felt threatened.

Of course Georgians and young Ukrainians want to be connected to the prosperous west, the land of oppotunity. But try and flip the scenerio around. As unlikely as its sounds imagine Scotland wanting to move out of Englands sphere of influence. Russia pops up with billions in funding to strengthen Scotlands military, Putin visits Scotland and pledges his support etc - which is what happened more or less in Georgia wish Bush visiting and huge monetry/military backing. I don't think we'd take that lying down, nor would the US if it happened in its backyard.

10 years on we have found out how Russia asserted itself - with quite amazing successes using online tools and funding subvertive local politics. Russia totally schooled the wests secret services. In this Big Game they out did themeselves. Who knows what behind the scenes retributions the west will come back with...

Russia is run by an elite associated with the old KGB, but that doesn't mean their international policies are as bad as they are made out to be. Just as the communist elite have transposed into Oligarch elites, so Western media and politicans have moved to a post-coldwar narrative about Russia. Old habits die hard, especially in the right wing American political sphere, the old school who seek to shape the world with cold war tatics; and in Russia where the people respect strenth and power and Putin uses the Ukraine conflict to boost popularity. Things change, but nothing changes.
 
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I really liked it. Cosmopolitan without being over-developed. Nice cafes and good food (by my standards). Very friendly people. Nothing pretentious, just a capital city going about its business. Public transport but most things were fairly walkable.
 
Lost Mango said:
One-way traffic is a bit much probably but I think Georgia is different to Ukraine. From my time in Tblisi my understanding was that the US weren't funding a small minority opinion to try and cause issues. The majority of Georgians wanted to escape from the Russian Sphere of Influence and want to be part of the Western Block to have some muscle behind their aspirations and some security in their decisions (although they saw the futility of that with South Ossetia). I think Ukraine is a different situation, more evenly split, that the West tried to pull away and Russia were determined to dominate to give themselves better Black Sea access.
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Maybe not. But $3 billion is what Wikipeadia says the US have spent 'boosting' Georgia over the past 10 or so years. A country of 3m people. You're right that's not funding of a minority, that's country wide support.
 
They had some very lovely personalised Putin toilet paper in Kiev’s Freedom Square on my recent visit.

They obviously hold him in high esteem to go the effort of embossing his face on such items.
 
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