Ukraine has made it perfectly clear, on many occasions, as have all Russia’s neighbors, that they hate Russia, and want to see every Russian die horribly.

The fact that they’ve been fighting like thay have for 3 years should be a hint. The fact that the first thing to happen after the invasion was nato adding more members should be another hint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izium_mass_graves?wprov=sfla1

We can have peace any time Russia wants, they just have to go back to their shitty country.

It makes perfect sense as a threat if you believe you are the victim of the system, and therefore destroying the system hurts your enemy more than you.

We have similar things here, I grew up in rural communities who fantasized about the day all those spoiled lazy city folk would have to come down and beg the poor humble farmers for food, because then there would finally be justice.

Meanwhile all the federal and state funding was swallowed by the rich and powerful local authorities, while screaming about how the ciyfolk were all abusing them and never helped at all.

There is clearly injustice in the world, but we have a long history of exploiting this kind of hierarchical dissonance for personal gain.

The people don’t, but the geopolitical structure does.

So, we spent, literally a decade trying to squish China and Russia together as allies, because Russia is the shittiest ally you can have, and, much like in WW1, you can guarantee both erratic foreign policy and failure on the battlefield (Russia being Austria-Hungary in this case, as the Germans called it “being shackled to a corpse”), while also enabling isolation of both (Russia has a lot of enemies, like … basically everybody hates them and wants to see them suffer).

You are 100% correct Europe needs to stand up and deal with this, and that was the plan, but between China’s reticence to act and their current economic woes, and Russia’s general failure in combat (they were never expected to be this weak), the US is actually in a position to act, maybe not sending in boots on the ground, but air and drone support.

The key is the Sino-Russian axis being isolated and weakened before anything meaningful happens. Nobody wants a real war, the goal is a cold war that results in China and Russia grumbling loudly at how mean the west is to them. That’s working btw, it’s going well, aided by China’s economic issues and Xi’s obsession with domestic power over all else.

The alternative is an actual hot war, and that’s a lot worse for everybody.

I know the reaction is to think “why can’t we all get along?” but the problem is, the stakes for states, are impossibly high, life and death, so you have to always play the right move, because other states will act in their own brutal self-interest (see Russia), and when there’s no higher authority to appeal to, you either make the right move, or you end up on the dustbin of history.

Btw, China is fine with this: Russia ends up wholly reliant, so China can basically get as many resources as they want, and land/food/etc. Over time China eats Siberia, and Russia can’t do anything to stop it, but the oligarchs get paid well for selling out their country. win/win/win.

The moment they remove all troops from Ukraine and Crimea, we can talk about how they’re a threat to peace.

Until then, they have to burn.

Sure, but that was accidental.

Putin:

It’s a Russian mentality, they call it ‘escalation to deescalate’.

The Russian mythos is based on the concept that Russians are able to tolerate far more pain than anyone else.

So they might not be stronger, smarter, or better in any way, but they can always win a war because everyone else is weak when it comes to actual pain.

If they keep making the world more and more scary, the other side will have to give up whatever you want, because they need to go back to their warm, safe, decadent lifestyle, while you have nothing, therefore, nothing to lose.

It’s… Old… Older than the czars, it’s as deeply embedded in Russian culture as winter.

The problem is, after it works once, they feel they have to do it again, because we still have so much and it’s not fair that we’re so comfortable while they aren’t. So the cycle continues till:

I call if ‘aggressive victimhood’.

Edit: also they have to do it again because when you concede you proved you were weak and they were strong in the first place, and therefore they have nothing to fear by pushing more.

There is no real concept of compromise in the Russian psyche, it exists as an abstract concept, but… It’s like heaven, we all want to go there, we just don’t want to do what we need to to get there because we don’t entirely believe.

He gets rewarded for it as it gets pinned on Ukraine somehow. Or Mexico I guess.

Yeah we do, not like you think.

We spent trillions over the past few decades while Russia was collapsing like a flan.

Russia thinks they have nukes so that makes them feel safe, but you know the US never, ever goes without having a solution beforehand.

Abm is 1 layer, we have a dozen others, because they don’t cost that much and we have nothing but people having ideas all the time.

The whole point is that Russia knows, we can hit their launchers before they can fire (ours fire so much faster and aren’t liquid fuel, and we have so many fast attack subs compared to their few borei).

They know they have a 50:50 chance at best to seriously hurt us, and Russia, the area of land they occupy, will be removed from the planet in that case.

They pretend they actually are strong because the Russian mentality is ‘you are strong or you are a victim’, which is why they constantly piss people off and make everyone hate them, because they’d rather be hated than have people think they’re weak.

Ukraine destroyed that illusion, everyone expected them to walk across in days. We now know for a fact that Russia is a true Potempkin state.

And all the countries that have historical grudges with Russia? Ie, their neighbors?

When it comes, it will come at once.

It’s not nationalism.

Russia needs to be destroyed as a state.

I’m not saying we’re the best or anything, I’m saying Russia is a threat to peace, so let’s finish them now and move on.

They’re this joke we just always laugh off and ignore, but why? They’ll just keep biting our heels until we finally solve them once and for all.

Which is why they will only use it once they’ve lost everywhere else, and to reverse an invasion of their terriroty that threatens their survival as a country. An actual last resort.

They know most of their missiles are flawed, and we have countermeasures for most of those.

It’s like China’s final warning, they swore they would nuke Kyiv if they attacked Russian soil, and Ukraine took Kursk, just like Priggy got halfway to Moscow and Putin actually fled.

It’s the Russian way, talk huge, but always crumple in the end. Same way the Soviet Union went btw.

The oligarchs are not going to nuke the west, they keep most of their money and stuff there!

And you think the west is gonna be able to beat a superpower?

I’m sorry, what?

I wasn’t planning on us going to war with China…

What do you mean “superpower”?

Because Russia is a fraction of the USSR, the smart and functional (read: less vodka-soaked) bits of which were ukraine, you know the ones who invented their nuclear and weapons technology and the reason why the T-14 and Su-57 haven’t been used in combat, and why the Sarmat exploded on the pad.

Russia is just a rump state waiting to have its siberian half taken by China, either by force or by corruption.

When’s the last time Russia did?

We won both world wars.

China, otoh lost to Vietnam.

But I’m sure Russia is so confident, they should attack, let’s see how this goes, should be quick.

And both will disappear tomorrow.

The suits decide what we care about day to day, and you’re falling for it.

Oh dude, oh dude.

You have no idea.

We need to go to war, we absolutely need to go to war.

You think we’re as broken and pathetic as Russia is? Really?

We need to make an example.

Best I can do is more restrictions on travel.

They can’t get married till they have a house, and there are problems there…

It’s not communist, it’s just a nazi state with a different name.

All the rest applies, the racial bits, the cruelty and genocide, all of it.

No, I lie, the nazis didn’t execute nearly as many of their own people, nor did they restrict reproduction in the same way.

10x worse, you work 12 hours min and you work Saturdays, plus the boss is a lot more… Personally cruel than they are here.

That still requires a surrogate at least

I mean, that’s what the camps in Xinjiang are for…

… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17?wprov=sfla1