Again, please read my post.
I said I 100% understand why Poland, Baltics, Czech, Hungary... wanted to join NATO.
Its true, you did say that. I wasn't actually responding to you originally, but I see how it could look like I was so, no big deal
But I don't see why NATO had to expand to Albania, former Yugoslavia or even western countries like Portugal or Spain, all neutral places.... but the sad fact is being neutral is a risky game with the current mindset of "you are either with me or against me" that seems to rule now in the West. Or in Russia, for that matter.
Okay, you don't see why they did. But, they did. They are are sovereign countries that can make alliances how they wish. Maybe they are just wary of Russia being expansionist ( and no the existence of other expansionist countries does not make this any less true), maybe they just want the general peace of mind or maybe they want to slack off on military spending. Remember that after the wall fell, Nato stopped being a anti-russian coalition. It is certainly that again now, but there was a period where it wasn't.
Whats your point anyway? That this somehow makes the invasion more palatable? Because I would certainly disagree with that perspective.
We are being ruled by lies
Media are telling us Russia is economically broken and under total isolation in the world.
Facts are telling us russian currency is at its best when compared to last years, and few days ago, the presidents of Brazil, China, India, South Africa and others have been attending a meeting hosted by Putin. Being surrounded by the govmts of more than half of human population is not exactly being isolated, right?
Oh my, not this again. I'm not the media. So why don't we talk about the topic at hand, and not devolve into 'the media is all a lie' like every other thread. Okay, thats out of the way.
This next part is really important, because a lot of people don't seem to understand... Currency IS NOT the economy. The rouble, relative to other currencies, on the global market, has risen by a fair bit. This has been accomplished by brutal capital controls that will help in the short term but will scare away all foreign investment in the long term. Why risk buying stock if by the time you're ready to sell, you can't? Or why open a company in Russia if there's a high chance of the government coming in and forcing you to give up your hard currency in exchange for roubles? This is going to hurt down the road.
Now lets look at the Russian economy. In 2021 it was 25% smaller than it was in 2013. That is a huge decline. Now, the Russian central bank forecast expects that the economy will shrink by another 8-10% this year. It also expects 18-23% inflation I think it was. I posted it a couple pages back, go look or get it right from their website. They also say they expect de-industrialization, a lack of medical equipment, and a lack of airplane parts. Then you have young educated Russian fleeing en masse. And by the way, Russia already had a shrinking and aging population before Feb 24th. They had less people in 2021 than they did in 1992. Okay, so the demographic news is extremely bad. And soon you will have an economy that is 35% smaller than it was 10 years ago...
Lets get back to currency for a sec, because it isn't all good news with that either. A high market rate on your currency is usually good for imports, but Russia isn't importing a lot right now because of sanctions. So the benefit of this appreciated rate, is limited. Then you have the downside, its actually bad for exports. For every $1 of product you sell, you get less roubles to pay your staff and the rest of your bills, which will mostly be in roubles. This is why china intentionally devalues its currency, because it exports more than in imports. So does Russia.
So yeah, this is all not a sign of a healthy economy. They have lots of resources so they'll be able to chug along like Iran but it wont be a picture of prosperity. They have a very specialized economy, making it vulnerable.
The " russification" programs during USSR you talk about are a misunderstood subject. Stalin, no matter where he was from, wasn't a russian nationalist, none of the red leaders were. They were communist, and therefore they fighted the national ideas of every republic ( Russia included) as an antirevolutionary activity, nationalism was seen as a bourgoise nest for them. They saw themselves as soviets, not as russians, ukrainians, armenians or whatever
There is a Lenin's work, " About the problem of the nationalities" if you want to see how them soviets thought about the subject.
Lenin's policies were very different from Stalin's. Lenin was okay with multiculturalism, Stalin wasn't. I doubt the Holodomor would have happened under Lenin but who knows, he wasn't all roses either. If you are a country that is being subjugated and assimilated.. whether its to make you Russian, or Communist, or both, I mean, its pretty bad news either way.
And, saying that the existance of millions of Russian speakers in Ukraine has something to do with Stalin is inaccurate, to say the very, very least.
I said it was a big factor, and it is. And not just under Stalin... Ukraine has been under Moscow's thumb many times, under the Russian Empire, under the USSR, and if Putin gets his way, under the Russian Federation too. There has been multiple waves of Russification... Whether its banning Ukrainian in print media or taking it out of schools, or starving people and replacing them with Russians... That is a huge factor. Obviously them being next door, and Russian basically being an offshoot of proto-Ukrainian plays a large part too. I just find it pretty ironic that Putin uses Russian speakers being in Ukraine as justification for going to war, even though they are there partly from previous waves of subjugation.
www.newsweek.com
thehill.com
