After a hard day’s work, I have the chance to relax with a double Royal Salute on the rocks and watching some real, factual news on the TV. It got me thinking about some of the claims of the haters.
Among them, an unprovoked invasion to which I ask, to what purpose? Land grab? Ridiculous as Russia is already the biggest country in the world with an unimaginable amount of resources. One particularly outlandish claim was that Putin feared being overthrown if the Russian people could see how Ukraine could prosper by joining the EU and its citizens would become free and prosperous. Obviously that poster doesn’t know geography too well as Russia shares a border of over 1,000 km with Finland, arguably one of the freest and most prosperous country on earth. Russia also shares a border with China which is the greatest economic miracle the world has ever seen.
Russia started this SMO with just a couple of hundred thousand troops. Contrary to what some might think, Russia knows warfare very well. Even a non-military person like me knows that that is insufficient to take over a country the size of Ukraine. Obviously the objective was something else. I believe it was to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table which it did. If Russia had wanted to take over Ukraine, then surely they wouldn’t have bothered with negotiations so early on in the conflict. March 2022, a mere few weeks after the start of the SCO, I believe.
This series of events seem to support the notion that Russia had genuine security concerns about the intentions of NATO, led by a country that benefits from wars and conflicts all over the world. This is also a view supported by the global majority as well as a lot of renowned American and European scholars, military analysts and veterans.
Question is where does this end? Further escalation, ending in nuclear Armageddon as per @connda’s new thread? Problem is that the west is so caught up in their own hubris that they can’t admit they were wrong. Interesting times ahead. Oops, need a refill.