Mikhail Gorbachev has died

Look at Ukraine today - they are using so much Western technology, relying on so much Western money - and yet they can't get 500 km past Ukraine border. They wouldn't reach their own border if they had only their own resources.

You don't need to be able to compete with the US military technology to kill unarmed protesters. T-54s will do just fine.

And you're discounting the strength of millions of super-angry people too much. They would destroy the few tanks with rocks (or molotovs, as illustrated in Ukraine) if they had to.

(A lot of the StB guys decided to simply take advantage of the coming economical transformation and subsequently stole a lot of corporations and other stuff from the general public)

If the russians are not stopped in Ukraine, then there is no reason to believe that they wouldn't rinse and repeat in Baltic states, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and all other now independent former russian states. Including Alaska[4], should opportunity represent itself.

To truly secure Gorbachevs place in history, world must decisively say no to the russians agressions in Ukraine, and help Ukraine deliver a humiliating defeat to the russians and the dissolution of soviet union reach it's logical conclusion by stripping russia and their dreams off of any status as military, or world power.

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481 [2] https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/russia/957367/russ... [3] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-en... [4] https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/19/does-russia-want-alas...

Huh? You mean: Imagine if Russia just annexed Alaska after they sent their green men over-there, to disrupt and takeover the region.

Since when Ukraine just gave up on crimea? They were bullied off it and same with donbass. Their military was weak and disorganization so puting took advantage then.

No reason? I can think of 1365 reasons, if Wikipedia is up to date.

It had been independent / Tatar before, and Russification meant it was mainly populated by Russians.

The issue is that Ukraine refuses to allow for the self-determination of the Crimea and Donbass since Euromaidan. Why can't they just allow internationally managed referendums to take place? This would be far better than warfare and paramilitary killings, etc. for both sides.

Russia has no moral or any other claim over Crimea. Their actions in starving millions of people to death in Crimea in the 20s, the ethnic cleansing by evicting Tartars and Cosacks, replacing them with Russians - these all go to the long term drive of Russian imperial ambitions in the area.

Putin tried to take the whole of Ukraine and has tried several times to assasinate Zelensky, just like he has assasinated many others (and tried but failed to assassinate a previous Ukrainian president with poison).

The internal politics of Ukraine are just a pretext that Putin is using to realize his ambitions. They are not a reason in any way for the war crimes and attrocities he has committed.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...

My point is, the party/StB/KGB calculated (at least in Czechoslovakia - there are their own meeting notes about it) they wouldn't be able to win, and so decided they would rather steal some stuff than destroy it (or let the rebels destroy it). If they wanted to win by force - and initially they wanted to, until they understood the scale of the rebellion - they would need much bigger forces, but that was impossible to arrange, and not for lack of willingness.

They actually deployed the army (both CzSk and Soviet troops) and police, but the rebelling masses were way too overwhelming and they chickened out - there are videos of them going/rolling tanks backwards away from the enormous masses of people (easily hundreds per one troop, not even possible to kill them with your Kalashnikov). If they fired the tank, they wouldn't last 5 minutes and their death would've been nasty. What changed from 1968 in CzSk and from the situation in China was the scale of the rebellion - in 1968 only tens of thousands of people protested, in 1989 it was millions, and each incident (not like there weren't any) caused much more people to rebel instead of suppressing it.

And there was no silence out of Moscow. There are records of USSR-CzSk phone calls about this, and it was definitely not silence nor "we won't do it because it's bad" but "we can't do it because we're out of money, you're on your own BUT DO SOMETHING OR ELSE" (the CzSk side was asking for air support and so on). I assure you that if they went with force all the communist party members, StB/KGB agents and Russian troops would've been hanged afterwards - so the only remaining option was to let it happen and this way they all survived and some even thrived (like for example Andrej Babiš).

Gorbachev's "democratic-communist" (hah, what an oxymoron) Soviet Union could've never worked without the satellite states which supplied most high technology, a lot of important natural resources, etc with dictated prices USSR could afford, so I really don't think he'd just let it go if he had any other option. Certainly the phone calls didn't sound like they were happy about it or that it was the plan all along.

Overall, I don't buy the Gorbachev==good view. Perhaps he let the fall in DDR happen, but probably only because he was busy trying to keep other parts of the empire such as Hungary and the Baltics. He might've been better than the previous leaders, sure - but who isn't better than Stalin and the party? He was still an imperialist even to the modern times, and wanted to force communism (and all the associated baggage) down the throats of his subjects even though the people were demanding the end of planned economy. That makes him bad in my eyes regardless of whether he decided to let the fall happen or not, anyways. Certainly nobody to be fond of, and probably just a case of being at the right time at the right place - it's not like he could've said anything else than he said without being thrown out of the window.

The internationally managed referendums Russia has never asked for and would never permit?

Arguments that "real issue" with Russia repeatedly invading its smaller neighbours is that one of the neighbours won't grant something never asked for are not made in good faith.

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

But what do you do now? You can't just get the Tatars back, even if Crimea were made independent.

But here in Europe we've had 25% of our savings and purchasing power destroyed almost overnight, for a conflict that really has nothing to do with us (CIS borders and nationalism after the USSR).

Why can't we just be neutral? We didn't do this for Georgia's claim in Ossetia or Armenia's claim with Azerbaijan (both similar scenarios), or the Iraq-Iran war, etc.

P.S. I'm a Russian-speaking Ukrainian.

Very weird to say those things

- Inflation isn't just caused by the invasion.

- Inflation is at ~9%, not enough for 25% purchasing power loss.

- The conflict has a lot of things to do with Europe. Since when is Ukraine not an european country? Even if you mean just the EU, both Ukraine and Russia border several EU countries, and Russia has threatened some of them.

- "Remaining neutral" doesn't mean "free of consequences".

"a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.”

I think we all know how that ended up.

This is so wrong. Where do you think all the disinformation comes from? The rise of far-right parties across Europe. The attacks on democracy. Putin has been waging war against us (albeit a new kind of war) for many years. It is time to fight back if we value democracy at all.

The Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 26, 1991 [0]. Russia is not the USSR, and it's almost impossible it will never be anything remotely close.

Most of the former USSR industrial capabilities where either abandoned, razed or looted.

Russia's modern industry (including military) depends heavily on European (now sanctioned and obtained via third countries) and Chinese imports. This means that most of their industrial machinery, oil/gas extraction sector, automotive industry, chips... is now strained. They've almost stopped producing cars.

Russia is mostly burning the gigantic former USSR reserves until they dry out. And Ukraine is way bigger than Abkhazia, Ossetia or Transnistria so it has the largest burn rate since Afghanistan.

Just look up at their modern attempts of modernization. The T-14 Armata was expected to have over 100 of them built before 2020 [1] but only a few experimental units can be seen in the wild. Even the Iskander is a USSR design.

The "humiliation" is happening on both sides every day as we speak. No one will either "win" or "lose" the Russia-Ukraine war. It's just an endless attrition warfare [2] were both sides consume their huge military storage (Ukraine using a mix of exUSSR and NATO material and Russia using exUSSR material).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-14_Armata

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare

He [Putin] became briefly close to President George W Bush - who even claimed to have glimpsed Putin's soul - until the Iraq War drove them apart. In Iraq, Putin insisted that international law must be upheld - no invasion could be allowed without approval from the United Nations Security Council, and that approval was not forthcoming.

This is also Putin and it is not singular. If you listen to his speeches, he often demands that international laws and treaties should be upheld and he became increasingly frustrated over the years that this was not done. Maybe you can argue that this was his only option out of a position of weakness, but never the less he did this.

Putin wanting to recapture and rebuild a past empire is a very new narrative without much supporting evidence over all those years.

But do you think this conflict is worth it? Do you support the Ukrainian claim on the Crimea? Is it worth the bloodshed and economic destruction?

It's as though we're stuck in a terrible local minimum because both sides are too stubborn to compromise for peace, and there is no real way of having a truly independent process and decision-making (e.g. from referendums in the DPR + LPR, etc.) - ideally this could have been resolved diplomatically a year ago.

Wow, just wow. And how exactly were they supposed to do that?

The unity government was declared on 24th February and was formally convened on 27th February 2014.

How long did Russia wait to see if the new government would accept regional referendums?

Well, Russian forces seized control of key strategic sites across Crimea on, er, 27th February 2014. The same day the new government formed. The idea that genuine free and fair regional referendums were ever an option, or even something Russia had any interest in pursuing or allowing whatsoever, is pure fiction.

Suppose the regions did hold referendums and chose to stay part of Ukraine, do you think that would have been the end of it? Russia would have just backed off and respected Ukrainian sovereignty? That's just not how the Russian leadership thinks. Putin had no interest in allowing even the possibility of any such thing.

Even if Ukraine "wins"? Then what?

What happens to the Russians in the Crimea? Do they just let Right Sector and the Azov Battalion carry out their persecution, and move Ukrainians in just like the RSFSR did to the Tatars?

Likewise how do they control the DPR and LPR? They previously elected Yanukovych, the problem isn't just going to disappear.

That's a massive loss in purchasing power considering most things are sold in USD (including oil).

We didn't intervene in Armenia or Georgia, there's not much difference here.

Peacekeepers should be sent to carry that out (e.g. from the UN directly).

But dragging out open war like this is just terrible for everyone.

If they considered it illegitimate, why did they sign a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity?

The answer is because at the time Ukraine was controlled by Russian stooges, and as long as Russia had control of Ukrainian politics it was all fine. What they couldn't stand is the idea of a genuinely free democratic Ukraine sat right next to an oppressive and kleptocratic Russia. The Russian regime sees all of Ukraine as their back yard, every last square inch of it. They have even said so many, many times. Putin wrote an essay about how Ukrainian sovereignty is "only possible in partnership with Russia", and if you think he means anything like an equal partnership I can't help you. Crimea and the Donbas are excuses, they're a foot in the door to Ukraine as a whole.

Take your neutrality and what-abouts and stuff them.

Wait, so are they just protecting Russian-speaking people of the east from bloodthirsty Ukrainian Nazis or they are waging aggressive war with intention to topple Ukrainian government and annex significant portion of Ukraine outside eastern regions and Crimea?

> But do you think this conflict is worth it?

Worth it for whom?

> Do you support the Ukrainian claim on the Crimea?

AFAIK returning to status quo of pre-Feb 24 was proposed multiple times by Ukrainian side. That would imply Russia retaining control over Crimea indefinitely. You make it sound like Ukraine attacked Crimea first and Russia is just defending or something.

> Is it worth the bloodshed and economic destruction?

Of course not! I would prefer Russians to just pack their bags, leave and happily continue selling resources to Europe! They could even invite Angela Merkel to Gazprom board for bonus points!

> It's as though we're stuck in a terrible local minimum because both sides are too stubborn to compromise for peace

Ukrainian side offered peace with concessions multiple times (including neutral status, which is another usual bogeyman of Russian propaganda "we are just afraid of NATO nuking us from Ukrainian territory!"), but Russia didn't want to have any of that. It is almost like Russia is actually interested in something else besides securing oppressed Russian-speaking population of Ukraine and ensuring that no evil NATO nukes are installed on Ukrainian territory...

It's reasonable to assume if we fail to stop Russians in Ukraine, they continue restoring Russian empire with military force.

In the past, Baltic states and Poland were part of Russia, yet now all of them are NATO member states. A real opportunity to start a nuclear WW3.

This may be true, but I think it's more likely that he doesn't care about it at all. He is an opportunist, and back then the best opportunity was to criticize the U.S. and Europe by insisting on international law. Today, he is saying Europe is a fascist Nazi oppressor.

For Russia, no. For Putin specifically, maybe. Russia is going to end up in a much worse position without any significant (and maybe any at all) gain. Putin is in a position where backtracking is difficult and dangerous, so he probably won't until things become completely untenable.

For Ukraine it's very worth it because they're fighting for their own existence.

> Do you support the Ukrainian claim on the Crimea? Is it worth the bloodshed and economic destruction?

At this point, I do. Formerly, I'd tend towards "no", but I changed my mind. My reasoning:

* The war has already started. Crimea has a very strategic place in it, and a vulnerability for Ukraine.

* Strategically it's very desirable for Ukraine to own it, as well as for its allies.

* Strategically it hurts Russia a lot to lose it.

* From the long term point of view I think it's good for Russia to lose something significant in the conflict. It changes the calculus. Trying to take over Ukraine not only won't succeed, but will put them in a situation worse than before, and that hopefully is an additional reason to avoid a repeat. Russia can tolerate losing soldiers, tolerating losing a chunk of themselves is harder.

> It's as though we're stuck in a terrible local minimum because both sides are too stubborn to compromise for peace,

I don't think a compromise is really possible at this point. It might have been a possibility in the past, but it's too late.

The tactic of "rules for thee but not for me" is as old as time. The implication that putin wants russia to actually be held to the same standards as he is trying to get other nations held to - all the while fomenting war on his borders and ignoring eight bajillion commitments and treaties - is laughable.

As far as I've understood it, the burn rate is way, way higher than in Afghanistan. Soviet-Afghan War took ten years. I don't think we've seen this burn rate anywhere in the industrialized world since WW2.

Part of those lies also was, to become as "spokesman" for all sorts of internal oppossition, left and right alike.

Not what I would define as "winning", but ok.

Come now, how can you say that?

After the fall of the USSR, Europe willingly got into bed with the 'new' Russia because it saw an opportunistic economic advantage to do so.

Even back then it was a gamble for Europe to put too many of its eggs into that Russian basket and now it is paying the price. ...And a hefty one at that.

And a manipulator. He's the person who gossips in the background. He tells someone that guy over there just called you a name, and then says the same to the first guy. He's the type of person we all hate.

I know that he supposedly said things more in line with your point on other occasions but I never came across something that convincingly provided support for this point of view. Can you provide sources?

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/full-tran...

In the first months of the war hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians returned to their country to sign up to fight. We either support them, or abandon them to their fate. I don't see how you can credibly claim that abandoning them, despite their appeals for support, is better for them and in their interests. It's clearly in the interests of the Russian government, but why should the west care about that?

Sending UN peace keepers is a nice idea, but unfortunately Russia is a permanent member of the UN security council, with a veto.

Judging by how bad the inflation and energy poverty is in the West, as well as the continued loss of ground and billions in Western funds in this war whilst the ruble stays strong, I don't have the same optimism whatsoever.

It was the profit extractors that won the cold war.

https://twitter.com/Volodymyr_D_/status/1560350883929620481

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_debt_of_the_Socialist_...

This isn't even close to true.

Especially with history in mind it is quite clear that Russia would take any right that former competitors took themselves. Having lost the cold war or not is secondary it seems. Of course any argument will be used to the largest opportunistic degree. Putin may have believed that invasions now always need to be sanctioned and there was a time where it probably looked like that.

That Putin wants to rebuild past empires is something he openly espouses himself now. Although I do believe this is directed towards the domestic population. I also think Russia did believe that the US tried to topple government in Ukraine and saw a need to react.

Heh, I doubt such a thing exists or has ever existed. Resource trade is a large part of their income.

edit: Ah, you meant military capacities...

But personally I don't mind that much, it's long been time for us to wean ourselves off gas and oil. It'll hurt a bit, but will be a huge benefit on the long term.

Since the gulf war the west has become averse to foreign adventurism. I understand that and why, but it's misconceived. Washing our hands of the rest of the world and letting countries like Iran and Russia (and Iraq under Saddam Hussein) do whatever they like doesn't work. It comes back to bite us every single time.

Even if we say it's not our problem, it's not our responsibility, it always comes back and hurts us and our direct economic, political and humanitarian interests again and again. It leads to things like the rape of Kuwait and 9/11.

Being fully engaged internationally is expensive in money and lives, it's messy, it's morally compromising. It's also unavoidable. We are part of the world and can't deny responsibility for playing our part in it. Or rather we can, but at a heavy price to ourselves and others.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crimea-gorbachev-...

I'd also recommend you to be careful with predictions on the outcome of wars.

Disclaimer: Western troubles are features of capitalism, they provide the fuel, even if Putin is the one to throw the cigarette butt.

That's been going... Swimmingly for everyone involved. No violation of human rights, whatsoever.

For the current situation the most relevant part is probably the one dealing with the recent history, say the fall of the USSR or maybe even only past 2014. Unfortunately I am in no position to judge what is laid out and reading up on all the events would probably take weeks and figuring out the actual truth might still be quite hard.

[1] http://www.en.kremlin.ru/misc/66182

The poverty divide between east and west Germany was so visibly apparent when you walked across that line. Today, both sides of Berlin are vibrant and thriving. The same can be said in every capital city that has joined the EU. Massive prosperity compared to the Soviet poverty.

Our government had taken IMF loans with the goal of expanding industry to sell products to the West. We did, then we were prevented from selling finished products to many countries. Some of the production was redirected internally and towards trade with other socialist countries, but the loan denominated in dollars remained.

Then the IMF demanded we pay back the loan early, while mostly only allowing us to export food. Today this would be called sanctions. This was a tactic to intentionally create scarcity of food in the country, which coupled with constant propaganda (especially from Radio Free Europe) and arming and funding local fascists (including the famous snipers shooting into crowds), culminated in a bloody coup in '89. Similar tactics have been used by NATO powers against other countries.

Extreme right wingers want to wear uniforms and carry weapons at any cost: it's the way their brain is wired that makes them so inclined to the show of strength, obsession about physical efficiency, appearing and act dominant, being combative, in constant search of enemies to fight against (including creating them if necessary); and of course that decrepit ideology, which however in many cases is not the main motivator, therefore they're not perceived as Nazis, although they're equally dangerous.

The tale about Nazis in the Ukraine army is true for pretty much every country, including mine and yours. How many soldiers or cops or paramilitary forces does your country have? Well, you can take for granted that under at least 30% of the uniforms there are Azov-like extreme right wingers. And I'm very optimistic, because according both to personal direct experience when I was in the military and speaking with someone with connections there who now teaches in police schools, the numbers are way higher, up to 70-80% in some contexts, although lots of in-betweens make the distinction quite blurred.

Making Russia great again is also perfectly fine if it means to rebuild the economy, improve living standards, and similar things. Making it greater again, i.e. extending the territory with force is of course a different matter.

How well Russia followed the laws and treaties itself, I can not judge, I only know that Putin often said, we are fulfilling our obligations even though the US or someone else does this or that. See for example the speech at the 2007 Munich security conference [1]. How true this all is, I can not tell, I would have to become a full time fact checker.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44

Intervened on which side in Georgia? That Georgian government was absolutely terrible, putting dissidents in prison, firing on protests, etc. - just because they're anti-Russia doesn't make them good.

We should just try to live in peace and focus on our own nations and stop making enemies.

Relevant excerpts:

You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked.

In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people's views.

...

In essence, Ukraine's ruling circles decided to justify their country's independence through the denial of its past, however, except for border issues. They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation. ...

Being Jewish they probably called him a few other names too.

He tacitly accepted this insubordination without a fuss, as far as I can see. These days he lavishes Azov with praise.

In which other countries does this happen?

Well, as you point out, he doesn't get credit for opposing the Iraq War because he wasn't opposed to it (he just wanted Bush to ask his permission). He also doesn't get credit for upholding the value of International Law because he only does so when it suits him, which is essentially my point.

> How well Russia followed the laws and treaties itself, I can not judge

Sure you can. Russia regularly flouts International Law and it's currently in the process of doing so.

> Making Russia great again is also perfectly fine if it means to rebuild the economy, improve living standards, and similar things. Making it greater again, i.e. extending the territory with force is of course a different matter.

Right, but we're talking specifically about extending the territory with force.

Errors of the past are not a good way to go further.

Lack of any defense for Georgia was very sad (similarly for Chechnya, but Russians might look at it a bit more angry). Fortunatelly Ukraine is to close to EU borders to be ignored and handed over to Russian war mongering.

The case being discussed here, Eastern Germany, was just behind the iron curtain, remember? Soviet troops were at ~300 locations on the GDR territory, ~50 airfields, over 300,000 soldiers, over 4,000 tanks.

And before Russification it was Tatars, so either way it is Russian like e.g. India or Japan.

Nor does it change the fact that when it suits it's own interests, Russia promotes and funds fascists. Clearly none of this has anything to do with fascism, Russia didn't send massive columns of armoured vehicles and thousands of troops at Kyiv over Azov battalion.

I prefer that to being tortured in prison or being shot by soviet soldiers sitting in our borders.

For one thing, the problem is your tanks and troops have to be ready all around the country - the protesting people are moving across the state quickly. One day there's a protest in Prague, second day it's in Brno - but you can't move your 300k troops and 5000 tanks from Prague to Brno in a day. And then the next day it's Ostrava and you have to do it again. Then an incident happens and that provokes a 10x bigger protest in Prague, Brno and Ostrava at the same time. That's impossible. You need much, much more troops and tanks to handle this scale of rebellion - and the requested air support that never came. And your tanks will never make people go back to work, anyways.

(I'm discussing Gorbachev, not GDR specifically)

Which, given how he didn't do that before invading Ukraine, was just him spewing bullshit. Why are you repeating his bullshit as if it somehow excuses his actions?

> Making Russia great again is also perfectly fine if it means to rebuild the economy, improve living standards, and similar things.

Did you really miss the initial capitals in MAG-- eh, MARA? It has about as much to do with rebuilding the economy, improving living standards, and similar things as MAGA had to do with rebuilding the economy and improving living standards in America.

> I only know that Putin often said ...

If even you realise that all you know is his own spin, then what makes you think you have anything worthwhile to contribute to the discussion?

However, the material conditions aren't necessarily better. It used to be that everyone was guaranteed a home, a job, healthcare, education, etc. Homelessness is now a problem in most capitals, many struggle to find a job at all, healthcare has generally been defunded and privatised, etc.

So many of us left because we clearly had no opportunities in our own countries after 89, especially after so much industry was sold off for scrap.

For someone who is not pro-Russian, you're performing a remarkably good impression of someone who is pro-Russian, mr "Coup".

Yes you are. If you really think you aren't, you are deluded.

However, with a lot of fascists rewarded with government posts after their performance in maidan and an entire fascist batallion somehow having the independence to defy a presidential order to stand down in a war, it's pretty clear that fascists hold a significant level of power in Ukraine.

Putin only care about international law where it is in his own interests.

I'm in no way supporting or justifying the Georgian government at the time, we shouldn't have been tolerating that either. The point is what happens in these places matters to us. It affects us, whether we like it or not.

>Why is it our responsibility?

Because we are moral beings that live in the world, we benefit from the things that world provides to us, and therefore have responsibility for the state of the world we live in.

But no matter what, this passage is a far cry from Russia wants to grab land left and right and conquer everyone.

"I just read the entire address by Putin [1] after the invasion started - it's all about NATO expansion, historical borders or something along that lines make no real appearance in the entire thing.

"I know that he supposedly said things more in line with your point on other occasions but I never came across something that convincingly provided support for this point of view. Can you provide sources?"

I provided a source (even though your message was directed to someone else) and you proceeded with moving the goalpost to basically "yes, but did he stated he intends to conquer Ukraine to re-establish those borders?" (even though that wasn't what you asked for in your initial message):

"I read the entire thing [1], well I just skimmed the historical section until the 20th century. I do not see how this can be read as Ukraine is part of Russia end must be conquered back."

I indulged you and provided a specific excerpts that in my opinion reasonably support the notion of re-establishing the borders by force. Now you moved the goalpost again and constructed a stawman by saying something along the lines of "yes, but how does that implies that Russia intends on conquer everyone?!". Well, guess what, no one in this thread said that "Russia wants to grab land left and right and conquer everyone"!

In the GDR "job security" meant they told you what to work, choice was limited, if you always played by the rules, and if you didn't like that, you'd go to jail.

In the GDR no-one was guaranteed education. Today in Germany everyone can study whatever they want, in the GDR <5% of pupils were allowed to study, based on the status of their parents. Participation in events and workshops in school was based on the status of your parents or your participation in party organisations (FDJ, Young pioneers).

The GDR was on the verge of bancrupcy as were many other Eastern block countries at the end of the 80s, with low productivity but unsustainable high subsidies for food and flats. Poland went into bancrupcy and all other Eastern block countries were near that point (often because they took Western credits in the 70s and early 80s to increase consumer good production but couldn't pay back later)

(Anyone interested in Germany I recommend "Das Ende der SED: Die letzten Tage des Zentralkomitees" with protocols from the meetings of the central comitee).

I don't know how old you are or where you were at the time. I was there. In the GDR, in East Berlin. On the streets. And I can tell you, a few tanks and troops getting their guns out would have made major impressions on people.

It's not just a numbers game. You are greatly oversimplifying history here. Quite naively so, I might add.

It's a great achievement of history that Gorbachev made the Soviets keep their feet still and among many eastern Germans it's regarded as quite the miracle that this whole episode went down non-violently. Look around in the world in the last decades. This was the major exception, and Gorbachev was central to that.

Also, let's get the picture of the situation straight. He didn't just passively sit bunkered in in Moscow, letting things happen. He actively went out to meet leaders of other involved powers, including the German chancellor and foreign minister, Kohl and Genscher, which he outlived by a few years.

To take a President more contemporary to Andropov and Gorbachev: Jimmy Carter is still around, at 97.

You lost your credibility here when you took a large group and applied a judgement on all of them based on how “their brain is wired”. Replace “extreme right wingers” in your sentence with almost any other group without evidence and you will likely not agree with your own statement.

> The tale about Nazis in the Ukraine army is true for pretty much every country, including mine and yours.

Please provide evidence to this statement and the following paragraph. You have found a hypothesis that fits your narrative. That does not make it true.

Romanian leadership took a lot of loans from the West and spend the money on large industrial projects with Western technology which was either obsolete or becoming obsolete (Dacia-Renault, Olcit-Cytroen, CANDU for the nuclear energy, Rombac-British Aircracft, etc...)

This was a huge bet that did not work - but it was all done by Romanian Leadership. The West did not ask Romania to borrow, Romania asked to borrow. When the bills came due at the end of 1970s Romania asked to roll over their debt. Unfortunately for Romania at the same time US FED (Volcker) was raising the interest rates sharply to combat inflation. So rolling over the debt was very expensive. This was not economic sanctions aimed at Romania - this happened to every borrower that had USD debts (including regular people in the US).

Romania choose to pay the debts and the only way to get USD was to sell resources - because the industrial products were obsolete and nobody in the West wanted to buy. So Romania sold food and whatever oil they still had and whatever steel they still had. For the Romanian people that meant food shortages, heat shortages, electricity shortages...

This was done by Romanian leadership. It was not economic sanctions from the West.

And of course the far-right existed before Putin.

But he is the head of a mafia organization that controls the world's largest supply of natural gas. So I think funding a few right-wing grifters/useful idiots like Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage is within their capabilities.

And how would that happen when Russia can just veto the UN action?

With that out of the way, after the invasion started I got somewhat interested in the conflict and how it developed. Pretty quickly it seemed pretty clear to me that NATO expansion was most likely the main driving factor behind Putin's decision to start this war. But for many in the West it seems incomprehensible that NATO's actions might have played any role, even less that Putin's reaction might to some extend be understandable.

So following the invasion this narrative spread in the West that Putin is simply mad and wants to rebuild the Soviet empire - first Ukraine, then the Baltic states, then the rest of the world. And as I said, I could never find much evidence for this explanation. The thread started with the following.

So when putin claims casus belli over another nation's land due to previous ownership a whole bunch of times [...]

So I thought casus belli should maybe be best addressed in Putin's address after the invasion started and I never read it completely before. In there essentially nothing about territorial claims. So I asked for something else as I was of course aware of that other explanation. You pointed me towards On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians which, as you point out, talks about how Russia may have legitimate claims for territories in former Soviet states.

My point is just that the language in there does not match - at least in my opinion - what some people want to explain with this. »All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked.« I just can not see the imperial Russia in that language that would make this a reasonable explanation for the invasion, especially if you contrast it with the clear and direct language used to address NATO expansion and similar topics, repeatedly again and again for three decades now.

So if you think I moved the goal posts, then I probably just did not make clear enough where they are. I am looking for evidence that supports the theory that mad Putin simply wants to rebuild an empire as his legacy. And not some bits here and there, but something that makes it similarly plausible as NATO expansion as the leading cause, which is supported by countless speeches and documents with no uncertain language spanning decades.

Now, of course, you could reasonably disagree and continue pressing the narrative that, no, Russia has all the reasons to be concerned. However, in fact there is a Russian neighbor that shares a land border with Russia that is currently in the process of actually joining NATO for real - Finland. And what do Russia do about that? Invades them? No. Maybe a naval blockade and 100k military personnel "on exercise" near their border? No, nothing. In fact, Russia is so unconcerned that according to satellite images they have recently transferred bunch of personnel and equipment from a military base near border with Finland[0]... to fight in Ukraine. It is almost like Russia is not _that_ afraid of NATO and is actually pursuing some other goals in Ukraine... Reasonable person may even conclude that Russia was lying and faking its concern about NATO expansion after consulting the map and determining that for some reason NATO is still not nuking Moscow from Latvia that has been a member for some time now... Go figure!

[0]: https://yle.fi/news/3-12523695