Why the West really hate Putin

[zhaoyun]

Same here. One doesn't need to hate America in order to like Putin.

I'm definitely not a nationalist of any stripe (not for America, and not for China), and I generally strongly distrust government. But I do love America, not as a flag waver, but the country itself, the cultures, the peoples, the possibilities, the cities, the nature, basically everything of substance here.

But that has nothing to do with respecting Putin. I respect any guy who has the balls and brains to get shit done.

And frankly, the US government is always butting into other people's business that it has no business doing. I'm rather sick of that shit. That's why I supported Ron Paul the last time around, not so much for the financial platforms but I'm sick and tired of the US govt sticking its big nose into everybody's business, not to mention its bankrupting us.

Also, don't get me wrong, I don't think Putin or Russia is in any way a moral country. It is not, and he is a fucking asshole. But he knows what he wants and he fucking gets it, and waves a middle finger at everyone in his way cuz he knows they cant do shit about it. He's about doing shit, not talking shit.

[Jackson]

It's me who wrote the article

I guessed.

Thanks for taking the time, it's good to have multiple opinions.

[Dál Riata]

Whilst I'm sympathetic to Ukraine, I do admire Putin as a leader. In fact, I think he's the only half-decent major political leader in the world right now. And I agree that the anti-Putin propaganda is due to the fact that he's standing up to US/NATO interference in other countries such as when he saved Syria from suffering the same fate as Iraq.

[Drawing-slim]

Putin definitely loves Russia, but that's the problem. A total failure like Russia, suppose Russia is an individual character/person, shouldn't love himself so unconditionally, therefore Putin is lame aggressive midget.

[Loki]

Putin took charge in 2000. New millennium, new era for Russia. The Soviet years were but a brief interlude in Russia's long history. Tsardom didn't work out so well, either. Putin did come from a KGB past, but that wasn't his fault. It was the era where he grew up in. He changed Leningrad back to St Petersburg.

He had a lot of work to do. It wasn't an easy talk to transfer the old Soviet state into the new Russia. But the new Russia is something entirely different. It is not Tsardom, and it is not Soviet. It is something new.

[RussiaPrussia]

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a traitor, he wanted to sell yukos to the americans like exxon. That would have caused 40% of russian oil reserves being in the hand of americans. After he realized that putin is going to kick hiss ass and sooner or later would arrest him he all of the sudden turned to some kind of civil rights activist supporting the opposition so he let it looked like its going to be political motivated or this is what the americans advised him to do.
He never cared about russian democracy when he was in power and cooperated with putin.

[Loki]

Putin definitely loves Russia, but that's the problem. A total failure like Russia, suppose Russia is an individual character/person, shouldn't love himself so unconditionally, therefore Putin is lame aggressive midget.

He needs to be assertive. Russia was in dire need of a strong leader. Putin was also very active diplomatically. He forged strong links with Angela Merkel, who is basically the leader of Europe - and she has been for a very long time. Putin and Merkel have a lot in common. Putin was based in East Germany and is fluent in German. Merkel came from East Germany as well. They conduct their meetings in German, no translation required.

[Drawing-slim]

He needs to be assertive. Russia was in dire need of a strong leader. Putin was also very active diplomatically. He forged strong links with Angela Merkel, who is basically the leader of Europe - and she has been for a very long time. Putin and Merkel have a lot in common. Putin was based in East Germany and is fluent in German. Merkel came from East Germany as well. They conduct their meetings in German, no translation required.

Is there any video that shows him speaking German?!

[Longbowman]

Same here. One doesn't need to hate America in order to like Putin.

But it helps

[wvwvw]

A few more interesting facts about Ukraine:

The fact is, Ukraine is a state but not yet a nation. In the 22-plus years of its independence, it has not yet found a leader who can unite its citizens in a shared concept of Ukrainian identity. Yes, Russia has interfered, but it is not Russian interference that has created Ukrainian disunity but rather the haphazard way the country was assembled from parts that were not always mutually compatible. To the flaw at the inception of an independent Ukraine, one must add the baleful effects of the Soviet Communist heritage both Russia and Ukraine have inherited.

Some Basics

1. The current territory of the Ukrainian state was assembled, not by Ukrainians themselves but by outsiders, and took its present form following the end of World War II. To think of it as a traditional or primordial whole is absurd. This applies a fortiori to the two most recent additions to Ukraine—that of some eastern portions of interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia, annexed by Stalin at the end of the war, and the largely Russian-speaking Crimea, which was transferred from the RSFSR well after the war, when Nikita Khrushchev controlled the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since all constituent parts of the USSR were ruled from Moscow, it seemed at the time a paper transfer of no practical significance. (Even then, the city of Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, was subordinated directly to Moscow, not Kiev.) Up to then, the Crimea had been considered an integral part of Russia since Catherine “the Great” conquered it in the 18th century.
2. The lumping together of people with strikingly different historical experience and comfortable in different (though closely related) languages, underlies the current divisions. That division, however, is not clear-cut as it was, for example, between the Czech lands and Slovakia, which made a civilized divorce practical. If one takes Galicia and adjoining provinces in the west on the one hand and the Donbas and Crimea in the east and south on the other as exemplars of the extremes, the areas in between are mixed, proportions gradually shifting from one tradition to the other. There is no clear dividing line, and Kyiv/Kiev would be claimed by both.

3. Because of its history, geographical location, and both natural and constructed economic ties, there is no way Ukraine will ever be a prosperous, healthy, or united country unless it has a friendly (or, at the very least, non-antagonistic) relationship with Russia.

4. Russia, as any other country would be, is extremely sensitive about foreign military activity adjacent to its borders. It has signaled repeatedly that it will stop at nothing to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine. (In fact, most Ukrainians do not want it.) Nevertheless, Ukrainian membership in NATO was an avowed objective of the Bush-Cheney administration and one that has not been categorically excluded by the Obama Administration.

So where does this leave us? Some random thoughts:

a. It has been a mistake for all the parties, those in Ukraine and those outside, to treat this crisis as a contest for control of Ukraine.
b. Obama’s “warning” to Putin was ill-advised. Whatever slim hope that Moscow might avoid overt military intervention in Ukraine disappeared when Obama in effect threw down a gauntlet and challenged him. This was not just a mistake of political judgment—it was a failure to understand human psychology—unless, of course, he actually wanted a Russian intervention, which is hard for me to believe.
c. At this moment it is not clear, at least to me, what the ultimate Russian intent is. I do not believe it is in Russia’s interest to split Ukraine, though they may want to detach the Crimea from it—and if they did, they would probably have the support of the majority of Crimean residents. But they may simply wish to bolster the hand of their friends in Eastern Ukraine in negotiations over the new power structure. At the very least, they are signaling that they will not be deterred by the United States from doing what they consider necessary to secure their interests in the neighborhood.
d. Ukraine is already shattered de facto, with different groups in command of the various provinces. If there is any hope of putting it together again, there must be cooperation of all parties in forming a coalition at least minimally acceptable to Russia and the Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens in the East and South. A federation with governors elected locally and not appointed by a winner-take-all president or prime minister would be essential. Real autonomy for Crimea will also be required.
e. Many important questions remain. One relates to the principle of “territorial integrity.” Yes, that is important, but it is not the only principle to consider. Russians would argue, with some substance in the argument, that the U.S. is interested in territorial integrity only when its interests are served. American governments have a record of ignoring it when convenient, as when it and its NATO allies violated Serbian territorial integrity by creating and then recognizing an independent Kosovo. Also, by supporting the separation of South Sudan from Sudan, Eritrea from Ethiopia, and East Timor from Indonesia.

So far as violating sovereignty is concerned, Russia would point out that the U.S. invaded Panama to arrest Noriega, invaded Grenada to prevent American citizens from being taken hostage (even though they had not been taken hostage), invaded Iraq on spurious grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, targets people in other countries with drones, etc., etc. In other words, for the U.S. to preach about respect for sovereignty and preservation of territorial integrity to a Russian president can seem a claim to special rights not allowed others.
http://jackmatlock.com/2014/03/ukrai...n/#comment-353