bonesy said:Honestly, I haven't a clue—they're keeping me in the dark too! 👎
Man, that’s a fair question. You’ve got a point about the inconsistencies there. Maybe they’ve picked up some intel suggesting that Ukraine poses the biggest threat (which makes sense if you look at it from their perspective, since it's the largest country/most populous of the bunch, and they might even have more Russ in Ukraine compared to the other nations mentioned).
If you had asked me this about a year ago, I probably would’ve been right there with you, arguing the same things. My take has shifted since then. Look, I know Russia has plenty of its own issues, but when you stack them up against the West, I honestly feel like they have less blood on their hands.
And I don't really buy the idea that Russia is obsessed with expanding its borders like some of the media outlets here claim (I've actually stopped reading most of them lately). To me, it seems like this whole mess was triggered by security concerns and the fact that they're genuinely spooked by NATO. They feel surrounded by NATO and felt like they were backed into a corner.
What does the size of Ukraine have to do with it being a "threat"? If anything, that imaginary danger would be way more intense on the border with Finland, where 31 miles the only decent road connecting Murmansk Oblast to the rest of Russia runs through. But hey, that’s fine by them, right? No threat there (meaning: we’re just terrified of launching a conventional attack on Finland).
Russia doesn't have blood on its hands. 🤦
They didn't need to go around conquering Siberia; they were basically handed that massive amount of land. Besides, they were pretty much the only imperial power in the 19th century that managed to hold onto most of its empire from that era.
But let's not forget the history of wiping out populations along the way. We're talking about the Circassian genocide where they ethnically cleansed that part of the empire, killing roughly 1.5 million people. Then you've got the White Terror with 300k dead, followed by the Red Terror with 1.3 million gone. Then there was the peasant uprising in Tambov where they crushed 240k people, and after that, the party just kept going with the Soviets—including the Holodomor in Ukraine where maybe 5 million died, and the list just keeps going...
No, Russia definitely wants to expand. They annexed Crimea 2014, orchestrated the rebellion in Donbas, and back in 2008, they set up those two puppet states in Georgia. Now they’re maintaining Transnistria in Moldova, and every chance they get, they announce plans to annex more territory. Seriously, tell me again how they aren't looking to conquer more ground.
