In the interview, Merkel stated that Vladimir Putin, at the beginning of his presidency, had no intention of attacking Ukraine, and his plan gradually took shape over the years, partly due to the behaviour of the West.

Did he also have no intention of continuing to occupy Georgia and Moldova and the West forced him to continue the occupation and then invade Georgia in 2008?

This is not an act of war and no one sees it this way.

An act of war is ballistic missiles falling on your cities and tanks rolling in. It’s honestly pathetic of you to trivialize this.

You probably recognize this on same level, but you see too self-absorbed to be willing to publicly admit this.

You should stick to ruminations about how “Poles and Ukrainian are unfit” and “they are like the russians, anyway!” I think we will both agree that this is a good reflection of your character.

I am done here.

Because you were saying that “Poland and Ukraine are not ready for EU”, yet you don’t take the same maximalist, hyper critical attitude to the Germany leadership.

Did I not say bombing NS was a mistake?

I am just pointing out you have no right to pretend to be noble when you’re own leadership de defacto supported and enabled russian imperialism.

What exactly do you want me to say?

No I don’t support torturing russian POWs. I agree with you that bombing NS was a bad idea. I disagree with you that it was “EU infrastructure”, it was owned by the russians I believe and Germany explicitly told other EU members to “bugger off” with their concerns.

What bothers me is your moralizing attitude. The last two German leader were some of the biggest enablers of russian genocidal imperialism in the last ~30 years. There is nothing to discuss with Schroeder. Merkel as a bit sneaky. Nominally she said she opposed it, but all her actions de facto always supported russian imperialism.

And then you come along saying “Poland and Ukraine” shouldn’t be in the EU because they don’t uphold moral standards. You don’t see how this could be seen as hypocritical!?

So you would be OK with Ukraine and Poland building a Russian pipeline if didn’t go directly to the newly annexed Putlergrad oblast? If the pipeline went to Austria or Czechia following the annexation of Putlergrad oblast, would this fundamentally change how you would view Ukraine/Poland’s involvement in the construction of the said pipeline?

I am not necessarily arguing you’re wrong or trying to convince you of anything. I am just trying to show you how it looks from the other side.

I see where you are coming from, but I think this is not comparable.

Imagine if russia invaded Germany. Took over Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (renaming it to Putlergrad oblast), banned German and forced everyone to speak russian and get russian citizenship. In the mean-time Ukraine and Poland would build a pipeline to the newly annexed Putlergrad oblast. How would you feel then?

I never said russians were more or less infantile than any other group of people. I said your inability to treat russian like adults who are responsible for their actions (“they’ve never seen democracy”, “the west has backed Yeltsin since 1993”) is an infantilization of russian society. Is this not true?

Also those satirical TV shows were all basically crying wildly that bad things are coming. Said bad things came. So?

I referenced the satirical political shows during the 90s to highlight that the russians did have experience with an independent (perhaps imperfect) mass market press. Yet they did not see this as important. What do you mean by “bad things are coming”? Can you be clear and specific and not beat around the bush? Because it sounds like you haven’t actually lived in russia and you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Also Navalny’s ideas have changed a lot over time. If you are referring to his “Crimea is not a sandwich” statement, it’s just correct - international law has such a thing as right of self-determination, regardless of what Ukrainian laws say. The fact of military aggression doesn’t negate that right.

Thank you for proving my point about broad support for imperialism among russian society.

People are responsible to the degree the structure of power is affected by their choices. Said structure right now is affected negligibly by most of the Russian population.

And who is ultimately responsible for the said [russian political] structure right now?

I will have to disagree.

I don’t think she intended to be malicious per se (that would be Schroder), but Merkel definitely had a deep respect for russian imperial ambitions if not a roundabout show of support for russia’s land expansion.

Something along the lines of "well, what they are doing is wrong, but we’ll just have to keep supporting russia in hope that they will become normal in 30 years. The ends justify the means so to speak, except there are no ends in the case, it’s just Merkel enabling russia.

Reading through her comments after the full scale invasion, I get the impression she hasn’t changed her view and on an outcome basis supports the annexation of Ukrainian territories. Sure, she’ll say it’s wrong, but she will always oppose any real actions to kick russia out of Ukraine.

And yet she didn’t bother to take his words seriously and maybe consider whether de facto backing russia (e.g. thinking moving forward with Nord Stream 2 after the annexation of Crimea was a good idea).

There is a sizeable proportion of population not yet penetrated by the whole idea of democracy, but those would back any “current” regime.

You’re infantilizating the russian population. Political satirical TV shows in the 90s (remember this was before the internet) easily rivaled what you would see even on current US TV. Yet most russians were happy to accept a clampdown on independent TV and reelected putin in 2004 (generally considered a free and fair election). And they were OK with the comical medvedev seat warming exercise in 2008, not to mention putin’s formal return in 2012.

The russians would never back any political force that would reject imperialism or even acknowledge russian crimes. Even the alleged “opposition” in the form of Navalniy’s gang is deeply committed to imperialism.

In real life everybody is to blame, it’s just a question of proportions.

This is a non-sequitur. The ultimate responsibility for the state of russian politics lies on the russians themselves.

It’s about the choices they make. There is nothing inherent to russian society/culture that would justify such a state of affairs.

The said regime is also happens to be backed nearly universally by the russian population and is the core source of its power.

The “west is to blame” narrative is typical russian victim-hood polemics.

I would not be so categorical.

Under Tsarist russia or even the USSR, sure.

But they did have independent television in the 90s (I lived there at that point, some of the satirical shows about politics and the government made US political comedy look like low effort slop). Youtube wasn’t censored until earlier this summer (still hasn’t been locked down?). Multiple major news sources (BBC, DW, russia’s own TV rain) had russian language YT channels by 2010. Every russian had access to YT in 5 second via their smartphone since the early 2010s.

We shouldn’t infantilize them. It’s the choice the make. They have responsibility for these choices and they have no right to blame history or anything like that.

Many people grossly overestimate how many “innocents” there are. If the vast majority of your country supports genocidal imperialism (with majorities still holding across all demographic segments - even ones like those aged 18-29), this is clearly a broader social issue.

Now one might say, “well people are afraid so they say what the government wants to hear”. Preference falsification is indeed a thing, but even on a purely logical basis, the mere existence of preference falsification does not imply it is has a major impact.

Turns out you can estimate preference falsification. It’s estimated at 10% leading to adjusted result of 65% for support of the full scale invasion (75% using regular polling), with the authors stating that their estimate likely underestimates the true level of support due to the specifics of their methodology.

Now you might say “well 35% is still a lot of people”. Well it’s not so simple. There is a poll by Levada about support of annexation of Crimea that is much criticized by russian “liberals”. It shows support for the annexation of Criema at 85% with consistent results between 2014 and 2021. Turns out even with list experiments to account for preference falsification, the support is still at 80%.

I would be curious to see similar research regarding russian attitudes towards the bloodbath in Chechnya in the 90s. I wouldn’t be surprised if even with preference falsification adjustment we see support higher than 80%.

My point being that people often significantly underestimate how near universal the support for genocidal imperialism is in russian society.

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