Reply To: Russian Tensions
ALB (#240721), you are of course right to regard Putin’s depiction of the Russian war in Ukraine as “crap” when he adverts to threats posed by “decadent” Western cultural and religious values etc. But when you say that “he (Putin) departs from the real reasons behind the war”, are you making a comparison here, and implying that these “real reasons” are not crap (not false) and that Putin is giving a reasonably objective account of the origins and purposes of the war? I ask because in his speech at that rally of patriotic flag wavers in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium recently, he made it clear what he thought about the origins and his purposes of Russia’s conflict. He said “The West was responsible for war in Ukraine. It was they who unleashed the war and we used, and continue to use, force to stop it.” Fairly clearly, Putin sees his war against Ukraine as a defensive war in which the West poses an existential threat to Russia. Most everybody, apart from Russophiles and like nationalists, regard Putin’s view as utterly delusional.