[tliltocatl]

Aside from some factual errors, that's one way to look on things. Another one is that USSR's political top, however incompetent, released their personal fates are tied to their country, while the modern ones plan for a retirement elsewhere (or at least did so before SHTF in 2022).

> USSR: kicked their educated jews out (twice -- pogroms & doctors plot)

Sorry, that's not how it happen (source: my grandfather being a USSR Jew). Pogroms were before USSR (and were a huge factor in USSR becoming a thing) and before most Jews had access to upper education. The pre-WWII USSR was perhaps the most Jewish-friendly country in the world, or at least in Europe (however low of a bar it was at the time). After the purges and the war, with most of pre-revolution intellectual communists dead or worse and fresh-baked ex-peasant comrades now forming most of the bureaucracy, the pendulum came swinging back.

> kicked most of their educated gentiles out in 1917

Forced deportation was a few thousand cases, mostly humanitarians. Most of the educated gentiles left voluntary (showing their good judgement). And then emigration controls were put in place so the rest wouldn't leave - it's just 20's USSR weren't yet the totalitarian state it would latter become and had no machinery to prevent people from leaving.

> used up their remaining human capital as cannon fodder against hitler

Not like Stalin would not prefer to use cannon fodder elsewhere. It just wasn't an option at the time.

> Modern Russia is a gas station and strip mine with decent relations to the south and the east

That's what it was in the aughties. No more.

> Building up their defense sector

Russia already got damn nukes. That's the best defense against symmetric warfare the money can buy - and against asymmetric an inflated defense sector doesn't help much. Russia didn't built up defense sector because of any genuine or perceived threat, rather for the same reason USA does: it's a huge pork barrel.

> they don't get internationally looted again

Looted as in being sent food aid? (Well, truth to be told, this aid came with a heavy load of Mormon and Scientology cool-aid drinkers). The whole "90's looting" is tankies' legend. It was exactly the same kind of de-industrialization that happened in the West - except the social guards weren't in place and the state machine was totally collapsed. Which is certainly not a fault of any other nation.

> the right move for them, and an unfortunate reality for us.

The problem isn't "building up the defense sector". The problem is damn invading neighborhood country. Not only was it an asshole move, it was incredibly dumb because it leaves no good exit option. Even if the hostilities in Ukraine ends one way or another, the "new elite" aka bunch of goons with guns aren't going anywhere.

[krautburglar]

> Pogroms were before USSR

I know. Beside the point. The point is that 20th c. Russia/USSR's human capital had been obliterated.

> Russia already got damn nukes.

Old technology. Suicide. West has better weapons, like twitter (arab spring), autonomous drones, and whatever sonic/microwave mystery we used in Venezuela. Russia is behind.

> Looted as in being sent food aid?

Looted as in having state bureaucrats sell national assets to western corporations for pennies on the dollar, then buying soccer clubs in UK with their ill-gotten gains, as Russia's peasants starve and their birth rate collapses.

> The problem is damn invading neighborhood country.

NATO wants to put missiles on their doorstep. How would any other country respond? We would have glassed Cuba if Khrushchev hadn't taken his missiles back. US state department had been plotting the Zelensky revolution / Russia war since the Obama administration.

I am not a tankie. I am disgusted. We are skirting WWIII to prop-up the boomer pension ponzi scheme. We started shit in Ukraine (yes, WE started it) because the Russians were selling oil to Europe, diminishing the petrodollar in the process. It's also why we've kicked people's shit in from Afghanistan to Syria to Libya to Ukraine. Doesn't matter who you voted for, (D) or (R), the child molester uniparty was going to start that war regardless.

[tliltocatl]

> We started shit in Ukraine

No. Putin started shit in Ukraine after the locals got feed up with his dear friend's blatant corruption and he took it personally. America was never ever a factor there. The world doesn't spin around USA, even Americans may think so.

> Zelensky revolution

Lol, Zelensky didn't came into public light until a year or so after the revolution.

[tavavex]

I'm not related to the rest of the conversation, but the "NATO expansion" talking point is so egregious at this point that it's impossible to pass by and ignore.

> NATO wants to put missiles on their doorstep.

No they didn't. Joining NATO was never really on the table for Ukraine, because by the time there was political willpower, Russia had already created enough territorial disputes to prevent it from even being a hypothetical possibility. Not only was Ukraine never close to being in NATO, but you talk of "putting missiles" somewhere, which is like five steps further than that.

If they cared so much about NATO, you'd think they would've done something in 2004, no? When all the Baltic states were added into NATO, putting their borders 100km away from St. Petersburg and about as far from Moscow as Ukraine's borders are? And yet nothing happened...

Nothing was happening between NATO and Ukraine before full-scale war started. Russia could've kept the situation as it was indefinitely. They chose to go to war not because they were desperate and terrified of something, but because they thought they could win the war really easily.

Then when their war led to Finland joining NATO, Russia's official response was to look mildly displeased and forget about it soon after. Because they never cared about those borders. Those borders were close to them for close to 20 years then.

> US state department had been plotting the Zelensky revolution

The "Zelensky revolution"? The one where Zelenskyy suddenly hopped off the stage and became a US-backed revolutionary leader? Not knowing that he was elected a full government change after the revolution, all the way in 2019, shows that you know nothing of Ukrainian politics despite being so confident about it.

There's a weird consensus between Americans who really love and really hate their country that the US has its hands in all the cookie jars, and that nothing in the world can happen without America's involvement. Ukraine has a student protest that snowballs out of control due to escalations, resulting in the country preferring democratic countries over the bright future of becoming a Belarus-like slave state? Must have been the US. Sure, this definitely was something the US liked a lot, but the connections to it are a lot more tenuous than things the US did meddle in. Stop trying to pretend that Ukrainians have no agency and are just a cardboard cutout with Uncle Sam standing behind it. The US has a lot of power, and it has access to lots of variables they can tweak to try and influence the situation, but the primary parties here are Russia and Ukraine.