Thank you for writing this. Because yes, the lengthy post I wrote in the Newbies section very clearly stated that I do NOT support Putin (I wrote about the sense of bewilderment that existed here in St Petersburg in the days after February 24th, and how almost everyone here has either a friend, relative or colleague over in Ukraine in danger of getting shelled by Russian bombs now), I wrote that Putin's stupid, rambling, hour-long faux-intellectual lecture on Ukraine's legitimacy as a sovereign state falls apart if you go further back than his convenient starting point of 1922, I wrote about how his promise to de-Nazify Ukraine of its Jewish-installed (Kolomoiskiy) Jewish president was dumber than sh*t, and - it may not have been here but it was certainly somewhere online, I'll write it now anyway - ANY moral authority Putin may have ever felt he had over 'the West' and its war-mongering was napalmed when his bombs killed Ukrainian children in - among many other places - the theatre at Mariupol.
Let me state clearly: Putin is in the wrong here. And I don't write that because of any childish moral bullying in this thread about "you're defending war crimes!", but because my entire reason for posting on this forum having only lurked on the forum for 8 years was to offer a perspective that simply isn't getting posted here, but it needs to be. All I have done is offer my opinion on why Putin is going to win this war. And for that, I've been publicly called a "c*nt" by that guy who announced he's putting me on ignore (what is it with proponents of 'freedom and tolerance' and instantly shutting themselves off from alternate viewpoints while calling people "c*nts"? Is this what Western liberal democracy looks like these days? Is this what you're calling upon Russia to become?).
Europe does actually need to start at least considering that Putin is going to win this. And that in the years to come they are going to have extraordinary economic problems because of the decisions they are making now out of emotion and not calm analysis. I'll say what I said earlier: for all the US and the UK are congratulating the EU for irreversibly cutting themselves off from Russian energy (because it suits the US and UK economically that Europe is doing this; Boris Johnson in particular can't believe his luck in how utterly stupid his old enemy the EU is being right now), the US is still quietly buying all it needs from Russia, including Uranium.
Europe needs to ask itself this question: what would America do now if they were in our position? And the answer would be: not this. This is a country that a month after Saudi Arabia chopped up Khashoggi was selling half a billion dollars of weapons to the regime that did it so they could bomb Yemeni civilians. It's a country that invaded Grenada over a fruit company and Panama over a canal. And I don't write that in any condemnatory way but just as a fact. America is as successful and as powerful as it is because everything it does is in its economic interests. They never make cataclysmic decisions based on emotion or morality. Yet Germany is currently doing that very thing. As is France. And as is Italy. Last week the Prime Minister of Latvia was asked about potential economic problems for his country if the 6th round of Russian sanctions went though. You know what he said? "It's only money". An astonishing reply (but more understandable when you recognise that Eastern Europe's hopeful economic strategy is: "the United States will continue to bankroll us until the end of time"). Can you imagine an American politican saying that? "Sure our people are ready to suffer on behalf of another country, it's only money!" His career would be over the next day. This is a country whose elections are essentially decided on gas prices, not morality.
So my points here have been twofold. Firstly, Putin is going to win this war and it is long past time Europe starts to at least entertain this idea and figure out what will come next. And secondly, the prosperity that Western Europe - in particular Germany - has seen over the last 30 years has been due to their supposedly "unreliable" (and oh by the way unremittingly constant) flow of cheap Russian energy (CNN today had an article about how Europe is going to see a shift from the West to the East in terms of power dynamics within the EU). Without this, Germany would not have become the industrial powerhouse it is today. A decade from now Germany and France will be shells of what they were even 5 years ago in terms of the power and influence they have over European politics and business (don't forget, the politically friendless UK is hovering like a vulture ready to swoop in and feed off the EU's weakness). It is a misconception that non-Europeans have that the EU is a united bloc that helps each other out. It isn't, they are all suspicious rivals of one another (you'll notice how silent Poland and Bulgaria have fallen over the last week now that all these Ukrainian refugees are starting to complain about conditions). Putin knows this and is going to create havoc on the European continent in the years to come. And trust me, America is laughing its ass off right now at what Europe is doing, I mean their insane self-sabotage and willingness to float mouth-first onto a massive US energy hook. America is going to profit enormously from this war in the long term which is why they are going to do everything they can to prolong it, against the stated wishes of France and Germany, who will suffer most from it.
Finally: in an earlier post on here I said Donbas would fall to Russia by the end of June. I was mocked for writing it. Today the UK Ministry of Defence projected that Russia will take all of Luhansk within the next 2 weeks and after that Donesk will soon fall. You see, unlike Glaston's tweets, my posts on here are actually based on sober analysis of what's actually going on. For this I'm prepared to be unpopular but I'm not sure I warrant the "war-crime endorsing c*nt" epithet.
