Boris Yeltsin's visit to a suburban Houston supermarket in 1989 (2016)

To see Putin as a weak evildoer is falling for US propaganda.

The truth is more nuanced. Strong powers take advantage of weak powers and the US is no exception. We do it by expanding NATO territory. There are also arguments to be made that the US pushed Putin into the war. As it is a strategic move to have russia use up its arms fighting a neighbor rather than the US. The war also greatly increased US natgas exports to Europe.

It's pretty immoral / weak to for the world's superpower to push neighboring countries into war for these reasons.

> Even the US went before the UN in the case of Iraq.

…and then invaded unilaterally, anyway. In violation of UN laws.

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

> You're 100% wrong here. This is not the brutality of war but the brutality of Russia.

Look up what the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan. We literally droned people trying to save people we’d droned in so-called “double taps”.

We standardized that practice: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26296941

> Did they raise legitimate concerns and act like a partner interested in resolving a problem, as opposed to someone looking to escalate a problem into an excuse?

They spent a decade trying to work with countries like France and Germany to enact the Minsk accords — which those countries promised to guarantee.

Did those NATO countries act like a partner interested in resolving a problem? — did they even do what they’d promised in that treaty?

> Have you seen him? Have you seen Putin? Did you not see the anger and hatred in Putin's face on Feb 24?

Yes — Putin’s speeches have been thoughtful and considered, explaining their reasons. Especially compared to the vapid virtue signaling from Ukraine and NATO.

> I'm pretty sure you're just trolling at this point.

This is a bad faith ad hominem because you’re uncomfortable answering the questions of someone who disagrees with you.

That’s a sign you don’t have good support for your beliefs — notice how you’re bothered but I’m not?

Oddly, one of the sites I did actually correspond with online at the time was a university in Moscow. I had a job working for a grant in cross-cultural communication that used a sort of online model UN simulation with teams spread all over. It was pretty neat.

Foxconn and Pegatron are both Taiwanese companies (who make devices for many major manufacturers, not just Apple) but most of their manufacturing has been in mainland China.

Although some of that manufacturing has started to shift recently to India and Vietnam.

If the threat model is to protect against an overt military invasion by the US, geographical features aren't going to matter much either.

Furthermore, national borders do seem to matter very much to many people. Europeans widely condemned the Iraq war, because they saw through its false pretenses. And the borders we're talking about are shared with Europeans.

But regardless, the countries the US has invaded still have intact borders! The US didn't annex part of Iraq to create a new US territory or carve off a chunk to give to Saudi Arabia. Rather it changed out the government wholesale while leaving the nominal country intact. Despite its shortcomings, this is a paradigm that helps these disputes converge over time. "Iraq" is now just a part of the US economic empire, regardless of the immoral actions leading to that. It's not right in the sense that it rewards the aggression, but it is right in the sense that it provides more civilian stability.

If Putin were still just playing the covert/political influence game, most people wouldn't be concerned. He did that, and lost hard. He then tried the surgical strike to change out the government, and lost hard. Since he's a loser by current conventions, he flipped the table and descended into WWII-style razing of civilian infrastructure, exterminating the population, and conquering land area. Then he throws out the justification that other countries might engage in the same, even though nobody has. That is what is grossly unacceptable, and needs to be stamped down hard if we want our era of relative peace to continue.

(Also, given that Putin speaks to play a situation rather than promote consistent ideals, what he's happened to say isn't really relevant)