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I must have hallucinated the Russian Tanks rolling into Ukraine originally, were those a CIA op? These types of posts would be more convincing if you could resist falling into even the most absurd Russian propaganda positions.
Is the implication here that you believe Russia is richer than Europe? Because that's uh... and interesting take on relative world economies. A sanity check through claude and grok both come up with Russia having about 10-12% the economy size of the EU. If you insist on PPP then at best 20%.
We've been hearing a steady beat of these triumphant "the ukrainians are definitely beaten now, they'll submit any day now" on the motte for years at this point. It's not happened yet. Would you be willing to make a bet?
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Was Yanukovych a Russian citizen? How does a Riot in Ukraine justify annexing Ukrainian territory and then invading Ukraine? Ukrainians killed Ukrainians over some corrupt bullshit and therefore Russia should get to conquer all the territory? If this is how Russia conducts business then no wonder so many Ukrainians saw fit to violently oppose a corrupt deal pulling them into the Russian sphere of influence.
https://old.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/5jjswq/the_refugee/
The sacred innocent Russian must be protected from all by force, and this sacred innocence means Russia is never ever in the wrong. Subjects of the Russian sphere are rewarded with largesse, how said largesse gets distributed internally isnt Russias problem. Chechnya is a financial dumptster fire that Russia drowns with oil sales because Kadyrov cracks his own peoples skulls on Russias behalf not just for own benefit.
To be in Russias imperial sphere is great for ruthless rulers that have no qualms subjugating their own people, since Russia does not care and in fact often helps out directly. The problem of externally aided subjugation of course is that beyond a certain point it becomes external support required subjugation, and if the patron falls (Yugoslavia, Soviets) or loses interest (USA, British India) then the internal tensions boil over beyond the local authorities executive capability. Unsurprisingly smarter countries recognize the futility of this bargain and try for internal stability rather than seeking fickle external patronage. Ukraines misery is borne from Yanukovichs mistake in assuming he could use his internal repression tools and that his Russian patron had enough strength to overcome escalating dissent.
Turns out Russia underestimated its internal leverage within Ukraine in 2014, and spent a decade rebuilding its levers of influence and subversion to prosecute a more direct extermination of Ukrainian independence. Its easy and very fun to clown on Russias massive failures in the Kyiv axis and Kharkiv/Khereon reversals, but Russia did have a successful lightning campaign past the Kerch strait bottleneck and even up to Kherson because of successful infiltration.
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