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Ukraine Invasion
Vladimir Putin
War
Foreign Policy

“Russia’s Soviet-style peace propaganda has both practical and moral dimensions. Proposals to end the war on Russia’s terms are paired up with threats of nuclear annihilation, as in Soviet psychological warfare, when both fear and moral posturing informed the largely leftist Cold War peace movement’s ‘better red than dead’ credo.” - Providence

Discussion

Mon, 12/23/24

Some other points of reference regarding Putin's Russia:

  1. Putin characterized the fall of the Berlin Wall not as a boon for humanity, but a catastrophe. His job in East Germany? To work with the Stasi (Communist Gestapo really) to feed information to the KGB.
  2. Russia's Olympic athletes have been banned from competing "for Russia" because of rampant doping--just like the 1960s-1980s Soviet teams were clearly on the juice.
  3. Constant interventions in places where civilians are clearly targeted--Chechnya, Syria, Ukraine, Africa, etc..
  4. Post-Cold-War permissions for missions and evangelical churches have largely been rescinded.
  5. No news coming out of the Kremlin or government-affiliated media can be trusted, even when pretty much everybody in the world knows the real story.
  6. Dissidents and journalists are being killed by KGB-approved methods like polonium, Novichok, and "jumping from windows".

Like it or not, Putin is running a neo-Soviet project where he hopes there are (H/T Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov/Lenin) enough useful idiots out there to make it work this time. And now, as then, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church,Kyrill, is playing nice with the FSB--the new KGB.

This is why it's so important that Russia loses their war against Ukraine in the way they've lost their war against Syria; the freedom of ordinary Russians is at stake.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Mon, 12/23/24

I have been concerned with the Republican’s continuing softening toward Russia. I am hoping that they see what happened in Syria and that we should not allow them to gain ground in Ukraine. We have the ability to grind them down. A weaker Russia is a better world.