Russia won the Cold War

It basically is all America's fault. You need only look at historical fact.

The US won the Cold War in the sense that its opponent collapsed.
Instead of doing one o' them good ol' Amerkin stars'n'stripes victory laps then getting a life, the US decided instead to overdo things & expand its military empire east across Europe.* NATO existed to counter the USSR but, irritatingly, the USSR no longer existed. Russia did, but it was laughably weak.
*Thus breaking an oral promise by James Baker & Bush senior to Gorbachev, which Gorby was too naïve to insist on getting in treaty form, i.e. that if Russia accepted German reunification, with the former GDR now in NATO, Washington promised not to expand NATO "even one inch" east from the German border.

Unsurprisingly, this stunning breach of faith moved Moscow to start rearming — a herculean task for a country thoroughly buggered by the ruinous Yeltsin years, which saw far more bitter impoverishment than the Great Depression had in the US.
Russians were traumatized & supported the new sheriff in town: the no-bullshit Vladimir Putin.

NATO moved east, taking in Poland, the Czech Republic & Hungary in 1999, then Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia & the Baltic States in 2004.
Russia didn't like this, but was as yet too weak to do anything about it.

In 2008, Putin was actually invited to the NATO summit in Bucharest. (People forget how popular in the West Putin was back then, especially after bending over backwards to help the US following 911). In Bucharest the Bush administration moved a resolution promising NATO membership to Georgia & Ukraine.
This promise was strongly opposed by France & Germany because, as Angela Merkel later recalled, it would be viewed by Moscow as "tantamount to a declaration of war".
But the US was drunk with post-Cold-War euphoria & liberal-international ideology, & it squeezed nuts in Paris & Berlin but good, getting them to back off.

So the resolution was adopted. The Russians stated categorically: This Ain't Happenin' — we'll never accept this, never in hell.
And sure enough, within a few months Russia fought a brief war with Georgia, kicking Saakashvili's sorry ass but good.

But a NATOized Ukraine was a far more daunting prospect than Georgia. Imagine Mexico joined a Peking-led military alliance & China started moving in its military & setting up missiles on the US border. Would Washington stand for this? Of course not.

Then, in 2014, the US worked with the EU & "far-right" (translation: authentic historical nazi) forces in Ukraine to pull off a coup d'état. From then on, Ukraine was a de facto US colony.

Crimea had been transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Nikita Krushchev back in the mid-50s. K's wife was Ukrainian but more importantly, it was billed as a token for Ukrainian suffering in WWII. This transfer made absolutely no difference in the context of the USSR.
Crimea hosts Russia's Black Sea fleet & its only real warm-water home naval port. After the Cold War & with Ukrainian independence, Russia leased the naval base much as the US leases Guantanamo Naval Station in Cuba.

Well, no surprise that facing the hostile vibes of a US-organized coup that brought ultra-nationalist crazies to power in Ukraine, Moscow seized Crimea (which had an almost entirely ethnic-Russian population) a short time after the coup.
It then set about wrecking Ukraine by backing separatists in the ethnic-Russian Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Kiev responded by attacking its own citizens in the Donbas, & between 2014 & 2022 killed some 14,000 civilians.

Throughout, Moscow reiterated that reliable Ukrainian neutrality (i.e. foregoing NATO) & a measure of autonomy for the Donbas would fix things nicely. The West responded with the Minsk "process", which produced an agreement between Moscow & Kiev for ethnic-Russian language rights etc.

Ukraine never bothered to even pretend to implement the Minsk agreement. And both Merkel & François Hollande — the people in power then — have since admitted that it was a hoax intended to buy time to build up the Ukrainian military.

In early 2022, the Ukrainian military started relentlessly shelling & bombing key urban areas in the Donbas amid a constant drumbeat from Washington that Them Roose-keys Theys a'Comin'!!
An artillery shell hit a kindergarten. Though it was almost certainly fired by the Ukrainian side, it was portrayed in Western media as a Russian atrocity.
OECD observers confirmed that the ceasefire violations had overwhelmingly been committed by Ukraine.

When you look at these events, only Washington had (in its view) an interest in the situation deteriorating. It wanted to corner Berlin into supporting sanctions against Russia generally & the Nordstream pipelines specifically.

All previous indications from Moscow suggested the Russians definitely did not plan to invade, but Putin probably took all this provocation in February 2022 seriously enough to go about implementing the Minks agreement by force.

By the way, Russia sent in Far too few troops too make this anything more than a seizure of the Donbas. Putin clearly didn't anticipate Washington's response.
The conflict has had the effect of cementing Russian resolve. Russia has vastly expanded its armed forces & is now allowing the Ukrainians to bleed themselves to death in pointless assaults on Russian defences.

So... Ukraine is now being comprehensively impoverished, depopulationed & wrecked. Some victory.
The US is obviously determined to fight the Russians down to the last Ukrainian.

And of course we're all now closer to nuclear war than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. One tiny false move or misunderstanding in Ukraine or the Black Sea coast could unleash the sort of uncontrollable escalation that Kennedy & Krushchev feared in 1962.

Meanwhile, dedollarization is finally happening* as a result of this clusterfuck. Europe is being deindustrialized by huge energy-price rises & inflation is setting the stage for serious popular unrest.
*The bubblebrain Western media tell us that "the whole world" condemns Russia. Well, guess what — bullshit.

So yes, another fine mess America has got us all into.

LOL Lanzman, you didn't even read my post.
A face-palm don't make it, sonny. Produce a cogent counter-argument. I dare ya.

As for you, Albert, why can't you just not read it & get on with life?
Are you not up for anything beyond one-liners?

Don’t hold your breath. But, not to worry. Order2Chaos will be along shortly to explain it for him. Or possibly Demiurge.

I don't agree with everything @Nono posted, but at least he (she?) gave it a helluva lot more thought than @Lanzman's sarcastic one-liner.

Thanks, Farmer (it's most definitely HE by the way). I'd be surprised if anyone agreed with everything I say. And total certainty about things is usually a dangerous delusion. But I'm taking a stance here.
As you imply, what's the point of debating if one doesn't actually wheel out & arrange some arguments?

I'm not up for long-winded filler material from people too undisciplined to get to the fucking point.

okay, here's a misrepresentation rather than a flat out lie...

we all get that you simply don't have the mental discipline to read far enough to get to the point.

Someone will be along presently to dumb it down for you.

ETA: maybe in a while...

Here Albert, let me translate that for you: "For someone of my bandwidth, the point has to be two-dimensional, in garish neon, & no longer than nine words in length. Otherwise I can't handle it."

You grasped that some thought & effort went into it. And that this — not ad hominem one-click-wonders — is the stuff of debate.
Get it now?

No, you called me Farmer.

My apologies. Saw this State Farmer thing, havben't been on this board for six years, probably thought it was your handle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nah, he's trolling another poster - our local village idiot - Federal Farmer (though he's currently going by Steal Your Face for reasons that are as moronic as everything else he does).

Your stance is basically the Russian one. Did Sergei Lavrov write your post?

Wow. @Nono you completely slurped down all the Muscovite talking points didn’t you?

Tons of BS especially the Donbas numbers and the claim that the OECD (did you mean OSCE?) said Ukraine had the majority of violations of the Minsk agreements.

But the biggest issue is the entire premise. Set aside how childish ‘the US made me do it’ argument is on its face it requires a very imperialist mindset.

I DON’T accept that the major powers are the only countries that have any agency. I DO believe in the right of countries to be free and independent (including their own foreign policy).

Remember that the Clinton Admin and most of Western Europe was initially opposed to NATO expansion. NATO wasn’t something the big bad US pushed on Eastern and Central Europe but something those nations demanded. After a century or more of Russian subjugation these nations rightly feared a return of Russian aggression and wanted some protection against it.

Who are you to tell them they shouldn’t be allowed that umbrella of protection? That they should have to live in constant fear of invasion because protecting themselves from Russia hurts Russias feelings because Russia needs to feel like they have the ability to invade their neighbors to feel safe?

That's my opinion versus yours. Try again.

OR I just have no patience for a minor point couched in a massive fog of bullshit.

You didn't read it, 'member smart guy?

Translation: Everyone who disagrees with me is a Russian asset.

Most of this has been RFK Jr.’s same criticism of the US waging a proxy war with Russia rather than a war “to preserve democracy. “ If the US was interested in democracy who wouldn’t have staged a coup in 2014 and we would have allowed ethnic Russians to have the Donbas region.

Ironic, since I'm basically accused of that myself every other day for not echoing the other side.

But no, your post is full of half truths, omissions and distortions. It's not an honest attempt at objectivity.

Naw, sugar, I just looked at the facts.

Yes, typo, OECD.
I'm relying here on Jacques Baud, former colonel in the Swiss army, Swiss intelligence analyst, UN peacekeeping official, & international security expert.
Whaddya got to say in reply besides "bullshit"?
Do you have any actual objective FACT to present??

Yeah, the liberal-internationalist mantra. My reply: So WHAT? World events are not dictated by someone's freaking Rights. They're dictated by brute Power. Ask the Vietnamese / Iraqis / Aghans / Libyans, etc etc.

And here's a question: If the Ukrainian government runs Ukraine, why didn't Burisma give the son of a high-ranking Ukrainian official a $50K/month no-show job to get the authorities off its back?
Why did it hire Hunter Biden?
Get a clue. You really are naïve.

Who cares?? They have no SAY. And no leverage.
Washington makes the decisions, or do you need to attend Geopolitics 101?

The US made this happen. The US alone.

You're off with the fairies, big guy. You're ignoring historical events & railing about rights, which ain't worth the paper they're written on.

Point them out, one by one, you lazy ol' thang.
Or put a sock in it.
Either argue the facts or don't argue at all.

You're just trolling so my tolerance is limited. Let's try just one thing. You say that they were just going for Donbass. Why then did they have an enormous column heading for Kiev? And why did they say otherwise in their public statements?

And actually while we're at it. Do you acknowledge any of their crimes? Bucha? Mariupol?

You got a one-liner cuz that’s all your wall of distortions deserves.

Where is this statement by the OSCE about violations of the Minsk protocols being majority Ukrainian?

Looking at this document it looks to me like Russia’s refusal to remove their troops and mercenaries from the territories so that OSCE monitored elections could take place is the primary driver of lack of full implementation.



As to to your laughable assertion that Ukraine killed 14k civilians after the Minsk protocols here is what the UN says:



https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related civilian casualties as of 31 December 2021 (rev 27 January 2022) corr EN_0.pdf

As you can see the overwhelming vast majority of the civilian casualties occurred during the first two years of Russia’s invasion of the Donbas. The majority of which were killed by the Russians (we’ve all seen how they treat civilian areas).

As to your assertion that might makes right and that Russia has the right to subjugate and conquer its neighbors I honestly don’t know how to respond except to say that that is disgusting opinion and I’m glad that NATO agreed to protect Eastern and Central Europeans from folks in positions of power who share it.

LOL. OK. Looks like we'll have to take this over a couple of posts.

The Soviet Union doesn't exist any more. It dissolved into it's member states, most of whom were forcibly annexed by military might in the first place. Those two issues come back into play really fast here.

See, there you go. The USSR doesn't exist. Thus making the next statement really funny.

No treaty existed, so there is nothing here. For treaties to be binding under US law it has to be submitted to the Senate and ratified. There were no discussions of a treaty, at all, just personal talks between people who soon would not be their representatives. Baker, Bush and Gorbachev were all out of power within 3 years. Even IF a treaty existed, the Soviet Union no longer existed. Russia is not a continuation of the USSR, it's a new state.

What treaties DID exist? The Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians signed the Belovezha Accords on Dec 25, 1991 that recognized that each of these nations were independent and sovereign.

They also signed the Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances in 1994, where Ukraine gave up it's nuclear weapons but the US, UK, and Russia agreed to protect their sovereignty and independence. They also agreed to protect any nation from nuclear blackmail or economic coercion.

The US broke no treaties. Russia has multiple times in its wars of aggression against the previous Soviet Union successor states.

Again, no. Russian military expenditures cratered just when Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary started their ascession talks in 1997. It went from $17 billion in 1997 to $6 billion in 1999 - when the 3 nations officially joined. 1998 was the least percentage of GDP Russia has spent on their military since the Russian Federation formed in 1992.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/military-spending-defense-budget

Vladimir Putin came to power to the presidency based on the Chechen crisis, against supposed Muslim Chechen terrorists. But Chechnya was yet another conquered state that wanted to have nothing to do with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. They declared independence in 1991, and one of Yeltsin's first acts was to attempt to subjugate them. But that failed, and Chechnya was recognized internationally in 1993.

Following a familar pattern, Russia backed internal rebels to the Chechnyan government despite the majority of the populace supporting them. In 1994 they started active air strikes against Chechnya. "

They then launched a war of aggression later that year to try to reincorporate Chechnya in the First Chechen war. It failed.

This is the time when the rest of the former Warsaw Pact nations started to get anxious. They saw Russia launching an overt invasion of one of it's former client states.

Putin came to power at the beginning of the 2nd Chechen War. While Islamic fighters did attack Dagestan, the purported security response in the apartment bombings in Russia were at least partially a false flag. The speaker of the Duma stated that a bombing had occurred in Volgodosnk - but none had. One did go off, three days later. Clearly this speech was given too soon based on activity done by the FSB. In another case, FSB agents were captured planting a bomb in one of the apartment buildings. Putin came to power as a man who ordered the bombing of his own citizens.

Russia started attacking it's neighbors, and a man who ran the successor of the KGB was known to have resorted to fake bombing campaigns on his own populace to garner war support and was now President. So the other members in the region responded with closer security ties to the West, not wanting to be the next victim in a Russian attempt to restore the boundaries of it's previous conquests. Every single one of those states suffered under Soviet rule.