Russia - threadbanned users in OP

In one thing we agree, putin has two hopes of marching on Europe; none and feck all. His military have been shown to be more bark than bite and that's against a below par much smaller military force with some recent NATO training. That they put to good use and are learning very quickly. If, as many Russian sympathisers need to believe as a coping mechanism for failure after failure, they were actually fighting NATO ground sea and air forces, Russia's sea fleet(which already ran and hid from a nation that doesn't even have a navy) would be at the bottom of the Black Sea, anything Russian larger than a kite would be blown out of the sky and their ground forces would be flattened.

However we in the "West" have no need to be convinced of anything in the overall picture. Beyond all spin and propaganda the facts are clear. Milllions wouldn't be displaced, tens of thousands of men women and kids(including Russians) wouldn't be dead and many more crippled if putin's Russia hadn't invaded another sovereign state. And before the usual whataboutery wheels in, millions in the "West" including myself opposed the Yanks invading Iraq or Afghanistan.

In Mother Russia Assange would have fallen from a six floor window, drinking tea, with ten self inflcted knife wounds in his back years ago.

And putin isn't "determined to cut ties", those ties were cut for him by Western economies. He had no choice in the matter. Well he did. He could have not invaded Ukraine and tried to take Kyiv(IMHO he might well have gotten away with taking "just" Donbas, but hubris came a knocking). The same putin was only too happy to suck off the teat of "our financial matrix" for over twenty years directly fuelling Russian industry and commerce. To the degree that he shot himself and Mother Russia in both feet with both barrels with this war. Not just oil and gas either, but there's a reason the vast majority of capacity pipelines for both were built into the West rather than to his CIS "friends". Their manufacturing industry has near ground to a halt because of all that desire for and now cut off off of "our financial matrix".

Annnnd we're back to "sanctions are hurting you more than Russia" stuff. You do know the more it keeps being said the more it's obvious it's clearly working. Even in putin's big leverage gas, European nations are nearly at full capacity for this winter. I can get on an international safety certified flight, I can go out and buy a car, PC, whatever with all mod cons produced in the "West", paid for with money made in a growing economy, where Russians can't and their homegrown cars now can't even fit basics like airbags. Russia's exports to anywhere are now smaller than Ireland's, a nation on the edge of the Atlantic with a population 1/30th it's size. He wishes it was more like the USSR. At least then they had a whole separate world and economy.

Oh and rather than decreasing the size and threat of NATO, as was one of his BS claims, the damned fool has near doubled the length of the NATO/Russian border, has increased the resolve of European and Western powers, who had seen Russia as if not a "friend" not an "enemy". And even worse for the 3D chess master he's giving hated America an extremely cheap way to bleed out their old rivals for an absolutely tiny fraction of the cost Afghanistan was for them and with none of the coffins draped in the Stars and Stripes. Much has been spun that the US and the evil West baited Mother Russia into this war. OK, let's agree they did. Russia: Always the victim, never the bride. However if you believe that you must also have to believe that the Russians and putin were so bloody stupid that they knew this, took the bait and walked into that same trap.