“Yet Russia insists on declaring that it fears NATO, a defensive alliance that mostly still exists, in 2022, because so many Europeans fear Russia. Putin has kept up this victim act for so many years that it has become banal; even many Russian experts now accept this performance as normal. But even if he believes it himself—even if he thinks that a handful of American soldiers rotating in and out of Poland pose some kind of physical threat to Moscow—that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to accommodate his paranoia.”
“Putin’s interest is also ideological. Every year, Ukraine becomes more confident, more united, more European. Every year, Ukraine inches a little bit closer to democracy and prosperity. What if it gets there? The idea of a flourishing, democratic Ukraine right on Russia’s doorstep is, for Putin, personally intolerable. Just as Ukrainian independence once seemed to Stalin to be a dire threat to his Bolshevik regime, so too would a successful modern Ukraine pose too great a challenge to Putin’s autocratic, sclerotic, kleptocratic, and ever more brutal political system. What if Russians start envying their Ukrainian neighbors? What if they decide they want a system like that too?”
– interesting read and puts the whole situation into perspective
“Putin is right about one thing: A free, prosperous, democratic neighbor is a threat to his autocratic regime.”
3 comments
“Yet Russia insists on declaring that it fears NATO, a defensive alliance that mostly still exists, in 2022, because so many Europeans fear Russia. Putin has kept up this victim act for so many years that it has become banal; even many Russian experts now accept this performance as normal. But even if he believes it himself—even if he thinks that a handful of American soldiers rotating in and out of Poland pose some kind of physical threat to Moscow—that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to accommodate his paranoia.”
“Putin’s interest is also ideological. Every year, Ukraine becomes more confident, more united, more European. Every year, Ukraine inches a little bit closer to democracy and prosperity. What if it gets there? The idea of a flourishing, democratic Ukraine right on Russia’s doorstep is, for Putin, personally intolerable. Just as Ukrainian independence once seemed to Stalin to be a dire threat to his Bolshevik regime, so too would a successful modern Ukraine pose too great a challenge to Putin’s autocratic, sclerotic, kleptocratic, and ever more brutal political system. What if Russians start envying their Ukrainian neighbors? What if they decide they want a system like that too?”
– interesting read and puts the whole situation into perspective
“Putin is right about one thing: A free, prosperous, democratic neighbor is a threat to his autocratic regime.”
I think is Ukraine