IS THE USA APPROACH TO PUTIN'S AGGRESSION WORKING?

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow stay on subject

@Khenpal1 Did you even see the title of the video posted?

@Khenpal1 The video posted literally is titled peace with Ukraine could collapse Russia. That is the topic.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Possible outcome

@Khenpal1 Not even remotely if you actually have a clue what is going on there.


Online likely if you believe western talking heads who could not find Ukraine on a map before 2014 calling themselves "experts" now.

Most are still living off Yeltsin and soviet era cliches.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow You got the topic right - but it's really the economics (seized assets) and the human losses (if they are not totally exaggerated) that will prevent Russia from a quick recovery. Nobody is saying that Russia will disappear from the map..... it's just that the oligarchy that Putin has established won't be able to hold onto power - too much loss of face, too much explaining of an inexplicable dream.
Bottom line: Do you think Russia should be allowed to annex Ukraine?

@JollyRoger A couple of things here. Most of the stolen assets were only taken from oligarchs many of which fled to Europe and the US to preserve their ill gotten gains and ironically solving the oligarch issue for Putin.

And the Russian economy is actually in better shape now than it was. It is no longer dependent on outside financing and alot of what was lost was replaced by domestic alternatives. In fact alot of foreign companies left factories and offices intact and it was just a matter of restaffing them.

And Russia has 10 times the population of Ukraine and can absorb the loses they are taking. Ukraine cannot. They have already effectively lost their workforce, the average Ukrainian soldier is older than me (I am 43), and millions left the country with no interest to fight for the regime and Kiev and likely will not return because they have new lives elsewhere (including 5 million in Russia btw).

Ukraine also had a very small percentage of the population that are of the cohort that have children because well nobody from the previous generations wanted to have kids in Europe's most corrupt country. So they have a demographic crisis and the west is still trying to pressure them into drafting 18 year olds.

And if you are talking losses as reported by Kiev than you are looking at completely invented numbers.


As for your question. Annexation was never what this was about.

The US and UK tried to turn Ukraine into a forward operating base for yet more NATO expansion and like even American experts told Bill Clinton back in the 1990s that would start a war.

Russians are tired of American proxy wars in Eastern Europe and don't want to be fighting whoever is the new fig leaf in 10 years just because Washington didn't get the cold war is over.

They didn't start this but they will damn well finish it.

And as for the Donbas Region and Crimea, Kiev burned those bridges in 2014.

It amazes me how a decade in people refuse to educate themselves on the history and politics and just blindly believe whatever the news tells them to believe.