> The revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine of 2004-5 fed Putin’s “dark paranoia” that the Kremlin was threatened by a western plot to topple his regime. The Kremlin has subsequently revelled in escalating conflicts with the western powers as a marker of Russia’s newly regained stature on the world stage.
The US has spent a generation pushing first the Soviets, then Russia, back into a very tightly confined sphere of influence. There is no obvious limit to the amount of harm the US has been wishing on Russian interests.
It is a remarkably cycloptic perspective call such fears 'paranoid' or to paint Russia as some sort of aggressor. Russia isn't the one with military bases set up in North America. Russia isn't cutting people off from the global trade network or invading every other country in Western Asia. They are a relatively neutral country on the world stage in terms of aggressive foreign posture, even accounting for this article.
The bit that you miss is that the people who had the misfortune to live in the Russian "sphere of influence" did not want, and will never want to be in it. The former Russian "spheres of influence" are very happy to be out of it, and terrified by the prospect of finding themselves drawn into it.
I am the first person to criticise the Russian sphere of influence. They did a terrible job from the rise of the proletariat through to today. Even I could do a better job if left to administer the country.
However to call them aggressors is a total perversion of the word aggression. Their posture is backs-to-the-wall defensive in relation to Western powers.
They are absolutely aggressors, and the defensive posturing is something they (Russian leaders) have used for centuries to excuse aggression. Their armies never conquer, they "liberate". This is not a tactic unique to them, but one they excel in.
Don't bother, most of the people with an interest in discussing Russia have not one iota of understanding of the difference between 'invading' a country and 'annexing' it, or they choose to willingly conflate the two since it works against American's interest in this discussion:
Well yes, America's "invasion" was a muddle of confused goals & retaliation while Russias "annexation" was conquest. You're quite right that they're different. One does massive incompetent damage while not intending to stay, the other does its damage deliberately with an eye towards the long term health of their newly conquered territory. Russia's imperial ambitions on their western borders aren't exactly new.
Your attempt to cast Russias annexation of territory it has had claims on for hundreds of years as a misdeed isn't really effective. There were actual Russian civilians being protected by Russian forces during that process. There was a fully armed nuclear base that was under threat of falling into the wrong hands during the Ukraine uprising (which, incidentally, the rest of the world knows full well was funded by the CIA).
Iraq lost 5% of its population during the American invasion.
How many Americans were in Iraq, who were under direct threat of violence from a fascist group involved in a coup d'etat?
Russia hasn't reached America's level of evil, destructive, criminal warfare, that is for sure. The claim that America was surgical and careful in its invasion(s) is specious at best, but really just downright evil. Literally millions of people are still suffering from the effects of America's callous invasion.
4 million innocent people have lost their lives under America's war machine. How many Ukraine soldiers did Russia take during the annexation?
Not even comparable levels of magnitude, no matter how finely tuned your moral relativism chops are ..
All of the Ukraine color revolutions were clearly US / CIA / foreign intelligence agency backed (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa). Both the EU, Germany and the US had their favourite political operatives in the fight. Various NGOs including German ones paid protestors daily stipends to continue protesting on Maidan, provided them with food and other assistance.
There is no question that the irregular forces in Ukraine received military equipment from Germany, US and other sources. There is videos documenting that. Part of the anti-russian forces were literal neo-nazis, complete with insignia used during world war 2. The Vice magazine war reporting (Russian Roulette in Ukraine) documents both of these statements.
Americans very shrewdly avoid the fact that their state was supporting literal neo-Nazi's in Ukraine. It seems they are caught in a caldron of misinformation and simply do not care for the truth, as long as it distracts the world from the other things America is doing, as a nation, around the world.
You blew it in the second paragraph. Russia is not a very active aggressor these days because it was successfully contained by the west, not by choice.
Not as successful as it might have been. US troops had once been on russian soil[1] but were withdrawn. If they'd provided more assistance Wrangel might've had more luck in ukraine[2].
You hit the nail right on the head. The underlying rusophobia that has been eaten and digested by the english-speaking world after the cold war never ceases to amaze me, particularly in the face of the global threat that is the american military power. America has military bases outside of their own country all over the world and has a proven track record of interfering in other countries' politics, causing several wars, yet Russia is always the bad guy?
The US has spent a generation pushing first the Soviets, then Russia, back into a very tightly confined sphere of influence. There is no obvious limit to the amount of harm the US has been wishing on Russian interests.
It is a remarkably cycloptic perspective call such fears 'paranoid' or to paint Russia as some sort of aggressor. Russia isn't the one with military bases set up in North America. Russia isn't cutting people off from the global trade network or invading every other country in Western Asia. They are a relatively neutral country on the world stage in terms of aggressive foreign posture, even accounting for this article.