I never said russians were more or less infantile than any other group of people. I said your inability to treat russian like adults who are responsible for their actions (“they’ve never seen democracy”, “the west has backed Yeltsin since 1993”) is an infantilization of russian society. Is this not true?

No, it’s my opinion of the humanity as a whole. My experience shows it’s infantile. There’s no moral principle obligating us to believe in something not confirmed with experience.

What do you mean by “bad things are coming”? Can you be clear and specific and not beat around the bush? Because it sounds like you haven’t actually lived in russia and you have no idea what you’re talking about.

I thought you meant “Куклы” and such.

Thank you for proving my point about broad support for imperialism among russian society.

Right of self-determination is anti-imperialist. If the conflict were between Ukraine’s constitution and that right, Ukraine would be imperialist. It’s just not.

But hypothetically, if they ever want to, they have that right. And if you want to make the world better, there’s no use denying it. Especially since no region possibly votes in favor of voluntarily splitting from Ukraine in proximity of Russia, not after this war. I mean, it’s a clearly hypothetical question since they are occupied.

And who is ultimately responsible for the said [russian political] structure right now?

I’ve already said that responsibility is proportional to input in a decision, right?

So first and foremost people on top of it, diplomats, special services workers, intelligence workers, high-ranking military people.

Then those whose input is a bit less.

Other than that, I guess one can differentiate by how someone voted in their life.

You’re infantilizating the russian population. Political satirical TV shows in the 90s (remember this was before the internet) easily rivaled what you would see even on current US TV. Yet most russians were happy to accept a clampdown on independent TV and reelected putin in 2004 (generally considered a free and fair election). And they were OK with the comical medvedev seat warming exercise in 2008, not to mention putin’s formal return in 2012.

This whole paragraph does not contradict what I said, but your tone seems to suggest it does.

Also those satirical TV shows were all basically crying wildly that bad things are coming. Said bad things came. So?

Anyway, this doesn’t make the Russian population any more or less infantile than the Ukrainian population.

The russians would never back any political force that would reject imperialism or even acknowledge russian crimes. Even the alleged “opposition” in the form of Navalniy’s gang is deeply committed to imperialism.

That political force was dissolved after its key figures were murdered or ridiculed on TV 24/7 in the late 90s and early 00s. It definitely existed.

Also Navalny’s ideas have changed a lot over time. If you are referring to his “Crimea is not a sandwich” statement, it’s just correct - international law has such a thing as right of self-determination, regardless of what Ukrainian laws say. The fact of military aggression doesn’t negate that right.

This is a non-sequitur. The ultimate responsibility for the state of russian politics lies on the russians themselves.

My cousins’ father is from Artsakh, Ukrainian politicians congratulated Azeris with their crimes. I couldn’t care less what Ukrainians have to say on responsibility after that. Try following your own declared principles first. Otherwise it’s not even funny.

It’s about the choices they make. There is nothing inherent to russian society/culture that would justify such a state of affairs.

People are responsible to the degree the structure of power is affected by their choices. Said structure right now is affected negligibly by most of the Russian population.

The said regime is also happens to be backed nearly universally by the russian population and is the core source of its power.

No it’s not. I don’t think you have even been to Russia.

There is a sizeable proportion of population not yet penetrated by the whole idea of democracy, but those would back any “current” regime.

The “west is to blame” narrative is typical russian victim-hood polemics.

In real life everybody is to blame, it’s just a question of proportions.

IMHO they might be just making a threat this way. Kremlin folks think that’s the way diplomacy works. See, we’ve launched a missile that can be used to send nukes. That’s our very subtle and diplomatic warning. We both understand what that means, yes? Let’s look very smart and diplomatic.

They may think that looks cool.

Russia has that black poop from the ground which is a valuable enough resource to be bought by someone for something .

It goes bankrupt if suddenly oil consumption drops 3 times. Or something like that. But not immediately even then, because it has reserves.

EU and NATO are not interested in Russia imploding. They are showing very clearly that their intention is to softly bleed it so that it wouldn’t be too aggressive, but also to preserve its current regime, because that regime is convenient.

It’s just the sad truth.

As to why Western countries always supported said regime, since Yeltsin usurping power in 1993, - I just don’t know.

Gorilla pain, gorilla bleed, but big gorilla strong, big gorilla stronger than wrong gorilla, big gorilla kill wrong gorilla if big gorilla strong.

Trump combined with people who made him president doesn’t have the weaknesses Trump taken alone has, that includes his narcissism.

Zelensky had a dubious, but real chance to have a better deal to (maybe temporarily, but time works in favor of the countries having access to Western weaponry, not their enemies) end the war. That was like a year+ ago. Also at that point Ukraine’s losses could be called justifiable.

Frankly I don’t think that mostly successfully defending against a 3+ times stronger enemy is something that can’t be turned into a success by propaganda. There’s nothing more to be achieved until demographic tendencies are reverted and people from front lines return into workforce.

And Ukraine joining NATO just didn’t ever seem likely.

I know about WWII. About today - it’s interesting.

OK. TIL.

I meant that every bearded urchin has an FPV drone in addition to his AK, and will drop a grenade from that FPV drone from beyond the range of small arms.

What targets? In modern war you’ll very rarely see an enemy combatant in the range of usual small arms.

Standard combat roles, ahem, are not about small arms today. They are about FPVs and small artillery.