this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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China isn't a threat to the EU lol. Russia is more complicated. but Putin is mostly playing the cards he is dealt. If you got rid of NATO and ended severe sanctions , maybe didn't blow up their NG pipelines, Russia would grow beyond Putin.
You could put any country on the left and the US flag on the right and it would be accurate. You could even put the US flag on both sides and it would be accurate
Russia is the fucking dealer of their own cards. The sanctions and blowing up of pipelines are both direct responses to their fucking invasion of Ukraine.
They don't get to play the victim.
Listen I do not condone the Russian invasion. But they were all but forced to invade. The western neoliberal hegemon wanted to draw Russia into a war of attrition, the west did a color counter - revolution after Euromaidan. Yanukovitch was forced out after asking for aid from Russia rather than the World Bank. The US funded extreme right-wing militants in Ukraine, and then, after Putin said they would invade if NATO expanded into Ukraine, the US and the EU pushed to make Ukraine a member state. Guess what happened next.
And the Ukrainian people have lost so much. The country has been brutally exploited for the last 100 years. The war is a proving ground for drone warfare, which is being turned on the people of the West. I won't say Russia had no options but invasion, I won't defend Putin, but he's the guy. The West can't admit that their bellicose attitude toward Russia keeps him in power. And the war in Ukraine is a prime example. Staying in power has its own horrible logic. The actions of.Putin are reprehensible, and I probably was too easy on him in the above comment. But it is much more complicated than "bad man invade." The Ukraine war was the result of a decade of meddling by the west.
Perhaps a similar argument can be made of the US, that large powers have to ruthlessly defend their interests, as Mearsheimer argues. But the war in Ukraine wasnt the beginning, The war in Ukraine was the result.