What you write is interesting, especially the explanation of assuming responsibility for an action to save face. I don’t know the specifics of how power is shared between the president and the Federation Council, or how much a powerful president can bend the council to his will (as even a weak US president, such as the current one, can sometimes bend an entire political party to his will). I assume you’re a Russian, from your reference to “our” president. (Estonian here -- actually, dual Estonian/US citizen.) But, regardless of who was responsible for initiating the special military operation (well, I’ll call it what it is -- a military invasion), the fact is, it still goes on, more than four years later; it’s clear that Ukraine is quite intent on defending itself, and countless thousands of Russian soldiers have lost their lives, not to mention equal numbers of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. And I wonder if you favor it, or whether you would, at this point, prefer that Russian troops withdraw from the territory of what is, still, a sovereign nation, not Russia, before more people are uselessly slaughtered. You asked in another post, should Russia alone be banned from waging war? Of course not -- all nations should be banned from waging wars of aggression, which this war is. But there is no “higher power” to enforce such a ban; with a large army, national leaders can do as they wish, unless there is a coordinated international response such as the one that thwarted Hitler. The US continues to recklessly attack other countries; there are stupid, brutal wars in Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere, none of which serve any beneficial purpose whatsoever. But, even if human beings seem prone to killing each other, at the same time that’s no excuse for aggressive military action.
