What changed is that they became much more open about their real goals. Previously, they did their thing, perhaps slightly more subtly, while bullshitting the world.
Chechnya and the other Caucasian republics are miniscule, and Putin and the Putin-sanctioned dictators there don't care about culture.
Putin may well have been more open minded, he just got pissy lately and he has a lot of power. One tantrum means thousands die.
Why would anyone with half a brain allow that? Most people just want to live and work.
This is about encirclement, nato, missiles on the border, warm water access
No value judgment in the right or wrong of it
I mean if the people in eastern Ukraine or Crimea WANTED to join Russia, there's democratic and peaceful ways to go about it. If Russia wanted access to the Black Sea, there's peaceful ways to go about it, like trade and freedom of commerce agreements like Europe has.
You remember Zelensky was elected on the narrative he'd bring peace. For that there was Minsk which was not good and giving in to force, but well, implementing it would have been a hell of a lot better than what's happening now. Yet, he wasn't able to achieve that? Maybe Ukraine isn't the center of democracy the State Department made it into the past 2 months.
This is just straight up victim blaming.
A hostile Ukraine, or a conquered Ukraine, only bring more enemies on Russia's borders.
> nato,
> missiles on the border
What missiles? There's already Poland, Baltics, Turkey, Romania that can be used for missile bases.
> warm water access
That's the bullshitiest one of the bullshit list - first, Russia already controls Sevastopol, and before the occupation of Crimea, it had a joint lease on it. And of course, it has hundreds of kilometres of Black Sea coastline to the east of Crimea, including the sizable port and naval base of Novorosiisk.
Russia is providing enough fake excuses ( Ukraine isn't a real nation, Nazis) as it is, no need to add even faker ones for them.
Sure what you say may have played the role also. But Putin wants "glory days" of SU back. That's why he continuously tried to expand Russia (and Russian influence) since he came into power.
It's about him being a power broker on international scale and not another has been dictator of 3rd world country.
Nato was just used as an excuse. Because of the submarines and ballistic missiles, It doesn't matters where weapons are.
And nothing excuses them for what we are seeing what is happening on the ground.
Still, it is possible that Putin really was, at one point, a bit more sympathetic to a multicultural point of view. It's possible that he's gone insane over the last 10 years. Consider how he sounded in 2012:
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Putin’s final major address as prime minister to parliament in April 2012 hammered home this point – the dangers of dividing and thus destroying. It came in the form of an answer to a suggestion from a member of the Russian Duma that the preamble to the Russian constitution be changed from beginning with “We the multinational people [narod] of Russia,” to “We the [ethnic] Russian [russkiy] people and the people who have joined with it.” Putin retorted:
Do you understand what we would do [if we did that]? Part of our society would consist of first class people and part would be second class. We must not do that if you and I want to have a strong single [yedinaya] nation, a single people [narod], if we want each person who lives on the territory of the country to feel that this is their homeland, and that there is no other homeland, nor can there be one. And if we want each person to feel like that, then we have to be equal. This is the principle question. The fact that the [ethnic] Russian [russkiy] people are – without a doubt – the backbone, the fundament, the cement of the multinational Russian [rossiyskiy] people cannot be questioned….But to divide everyone up into first, second, third categories, you know, this is a very dangerous path. You and I, all of us, must not do this.
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See more details here:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/mr-putin-operative-in-the-k...