United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

That strategy would work if you weren’t trying to reason with a Soviet-era psychopath whose only concern is his own legacy. If he’s on his last legs tomorrow you don’t think his final move will be nuclear revenge? This man has demonstrated that he will kill anyone who gets in his way, even his own citizens, in brutal ways.

> Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation

No, not randomly! There's has been a plan in motion since well before 2014 to reinstate the former Soviet Union. Putin has repeatedly said that this is his "dream". These countries aren't picked at random, they're all former members of the USSR.

Look at it this way: Belarus is a puppet state without border controls, a part of the new Russian empire all but officially. Ukraine very nearly fell within days during 2022. If it had, the Russians would have kept right on rolling through Transnistria and into Moldova. Kazakhstan or one of the smaller -stans would be next, and so on, until the former USSR was reformed.

> Not just without provocation.

Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it.

I want you to pause for a second here and think about what you just said.

Are you the type of person to believe that everyone that gets punched in the face "provoked" it somehow? Or every woman that got raped was responsible by "provoking" the rapist?

I ask you to ask yourself these questions because there are people that think that YES, every woman that got raped was at least partly responsible for it.

Are you that person?

If not, why does the same logic not apply to Ukraine?

Must they have "provoked" Russia?

And if they did provoke them somehow, was Russia justified in killing hundreds of thousands of people in response?

What... exactly... was the thing that Ukraine did that justifies 200K dead, 500K+ wounded, millions displaced, etc. Please be specific, outlining how the provocation is somehow a worse outcome for Russia than the dead and wounded they have caused.

Just to reiterate: before you go off on a tangent, please very specifically explain how Ukraine joining NATO has a "greater material impact" on Russia than hundreds of thousands dead and wounded.

By specific, I mean: "If Russia hadn't invaded, they would have lost N million people to X because Ukraine would have done Y, and the evidence for this is Z." Make sure 'N' is > 200K and the source of the information predates 2022.

> In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state.

At no point was Russia happy about the USSR member states leaving, and Putin has repeatedly stated that this is the "greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century".

You're arguing against the core motivation stated by Putin himself repeatedly in personal interviews.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-colla...

https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/12/putins-long-w...

Etc...

That "psychopath" (more exactly - sociopath) values his palaces and riches more than burning in a nuclear war. I.e. he can bluff and blackmail, but he is a coward who is obsessed with money and hedonistic pursuits. That's why the idea conveyed to him that if he makes any nuclear attack he personally will be immediately killed (by conventional weapons) made him tone his idiotic threats down by a lot. Those who see their legacy in palaces with golden toilet brushes aren't going to die as martyrs.

Macron understood it well and basically told him to get lost with his threats, or in simple words - France also has nuclear weapons. That's the only language Putin understands.

There is a subtle detail here in that there is an alternative to being invaded: you can surrender and become a puppet state.

All these words about "NATO expansion" and "western influence" are just a code word for what ultimately just means "no longer under former Soviet-block influence".

Just about any sovereign choice that a country like Ukraine makes that is not bowing their head to Moscow is by definition taken as a direct assault to their god-given right to rule their former empire.

So let's just cut all this crap about NATO or whatnot and let them say clearly:

"I want all the territories of the former Russian empire to remain under their former rulers. Ukraine. Georgia, ... are not free to do what they want with themselves, they are not really sovereign. We Russians have a god-given mandate to rule them. And when they don't want to be ruled by us we will leverage the Russian minorities we have planted in those countries to justify invasion"

It's a perfectly simple and honest way of framing what they really want. And they can claim that "the west" has already done much of that meddling with their imperialistic past and whatnot. Then we can discuss things. But you have to be honest about exactly what you want to happen.

There is no point pretending that the problem is NATO expansion and if it wasn't for NATO a former-soviet country could just do whatever they wanted. The desire of joining NATO is just a reaction to a threat of being dragged back into the Russian influence sphere against their will!

[dead]