They just recently got into big beef with Azerbaijan because they shot down Azerbaijani civilian airliner and instead of apologizing and offering compensations to victim’s families - they just got “wait did you expect flying in here?”.
So yeah, not like any decisions now gonna change anything since their practice of being terrorists who shoot down civilian aircraft dates back to at least 2014.
It comes down to realization that despite Ukrainian politicians seeking those “security guarantees” from allies it’s actually the other way around - Ukraine is the security guarantee of Europe, and right now Russians do such bold shit, because they think that Ukraine’s defense is about to crumble, so they are already preparing to move further.
So folks being afraid to shoot down Russians who violate their borders simply because they can - is an expected consequence of “we can’t help Ukraine, because it’ll lead to escalation”, while there’s just one side doing the escalation, and it’s not Ukraine.
Ah, come on, people “busy defending their homeland” still had plenty of time to invade Iran, and grab all the Baltics in “liberation efforts” (and no, Baltics weren’t part of Axis like, for example, Romania or Hungary).
But anyway - losing that many people is an absolutely valid point for why not to send forces, but my comment was about refusal to cooperate with allies at all - not lending airfields, detaining allied pilots doing emergency landings (they were detained until war ended too).
Soviets did eventually march in Japan, to grab some land for themselves (not that I condemn it, Japan was part of big bad after all), but before that for some time question wasn’t even about them directly joining the war as about letting allies use Soviet logistic hubs to launch offensives from far east, circumventing Pacific theater.
Fun fact: USSR dragged its tail until WW2 almost ended before entering war against Japan.
Term “Great Patriotic War” that Russians use to describe WW2 doesn’t just exclude pre-1941 events, but also war in Pacific.
And Soviets were the opposite of helping in Pacific front - denying requests to use their airfields, detaining pilots doing emergency landings in there etc. etc.
Stalin even wrote to Roosevelt that USSR is not obligated to help allies in Pacific because USSR isn’t at war with Japan. 🌝
Eh, there’s no opposition, there’s “opposition”. DDR school - 1 ruling party and 3 clown parties acting as opposition, and everyone else blocked from participating.
Except in Russia even main party is clown party - partially stuffed with celebrities to make populi happy, with only small part of people actually making the decisions.
You’ll then get “unaffiliated” individuals doing even more sanction evasion for Russia. And Russia loves that shit - just look at Wagner - Russian government was outright denying its connection to the group, claiming those to be “non-state actors” up until it got impossible to hide.
Can’t disagree. Even if it was best company in the world - it can’t be fair that CEO/CTO just has over one third of a trillion dollars.
Well, at least Oracle is definitely a better place to work at than most of Muskie’s galleys (except maybe those fictional companies like Hyperloop, that were never supposed to deliver anything except 3d renders in the first place).
Thank you.
Many folks fail to realize that it absolutely doesn’t hurt Putin to send another one or two million of his people to die for his delusions of grandeur. It’s not like he’s gonna have to start selling his mansions because Russia goes through economic hardships or that his own kids gonna get drafted.
If Russia did things that are logical - they wouldn’t invade Ukraine in the first place, not to mention that their invasion and annexations are illegal even by Russian laws and constitution that Putin can rewrite at his whim, but absolutely nobody cares. So expecting a country that breaks its own laws while being an autocracy to follow logic is foolish at best.