Russia - threadbanned users in OP

He leaves out quite a few points, but also makes some valid points and points that would be backed up by facts. Or to put it another way his points are just as arguable as the more simplistic Slava Ukraine pundits. His comment at the end regarding the war on terror, that it didn't start with 911 and you have to look at the decades of US meddling in the Middle East to understand it was spot on and applies with this invasion too.

Putin is an autocratic murdering bastard who with his mates has reduced the nation with the most natural resources on Earth to a near slum for a huge part of "his" people. While lining his own pockets with billions of course. He's likely the actual richest person on the planet. Even his slavish propagandists on Russian TV have been openly calling for their lords and boyars the oligarchy to stump up cash for this land grab like the medieval kingdom it is. They just accept this as their reality. They don't even try to spin it, because the Russian people accept, even oddly celebrate this crazy reality.

But putin is not mad and he wasn't "unprovoked" as is so often claimed. The guy in the vid made spot on points about how America painted Bin Laden too. The czar in the Kremlin had his reasons and to him and many Russian people they made and make sense. Just like the war on terror nonsense made sense to many Americans. Until it didn't. This is not some thick Hollywood flic with black hatted and white hatted cowboys where realities and moralities are kept simple for the simple.

His nation like the US have long played proxy hot and cold war geopolitics in sovereign nations and have done since(and just before) WW2. Like two dogs at a bone, only the bone changes. Sometimes it's South America, other times it's Africa, the Far East, the Middle East. Eastern Europe was the bone for most of the 20th century. They're well chewed out. There are few enough nations on Earth that haven't felt the hot breath of the pair of them breathing down their necks at some point or other because of their "interests". There's barely a conflict over the last century that didn't involve one, or both of them at the same time. Ukraine is no different and both the US and Russia have been playing silly buggers while people died.

Russia screwed up massively the second they made their disastrous and murderous run for Kyiv. They fared just as badly in the north east. They made unbeliveably stupid decisions like nicking the foreign airliner fleet. They made some better decisions to concentrate on Donbas and the south east. Until they didn't and lost a huge chunk of it and made a Special Runaway Operation. They're running away even on this very day. They can't help but lie, even when actual truths might serve them better. Lying comes as easily as breathing to them and listening to lies comes just as easily to the ears of their people and their supporters. That won't change any time soon. They should be driven back to their borders with every means at the West's disposal. But putin and Russia's moves were not unprovoked and didn't magically appear out of thin air and America had the biggest hand in that. PLus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Actually I would say putin and Russia's most monumental screwup of all was being utterly stupid enough to a) believe they could win b) not realise the resistance that would meet them from Ukrainians and across the world(the part that matters in this case) and c) take the obvious bait is obvious in the first bloody place.