Quote Originally Posted by russellsimpson View Post
I agree with this. I think western democracies, and in particular the Americans, had a great deal to do with undermining Mr. Yanukovich. People like Mr. Zelensky seem to have a natural tendency to swing right and I give you its neighbours Poland and Hungary as examples. To comprehend the problems plaguing The Ukraine we have to venture back to at least WW2 where, in the west of the country there was a significant part of the population who were not unwelcoming to the Nazis whereas in the eastern part of the country thousands died defending mother Russia. Folks in this part of the world have excellent memories.

Overall what we are seeing is simply another example of the continuing Cold War which has hardly subsided since the fifties. Had the west pursued a less aggressive path after the fall of the Soviet Union I'm quite sure things would be different today.

That's my pennies worth.

Fire away.
Gorbachev , Yeltsin, Putin term 1 and Medvedev all tried everything they could to make a proper peace deal with Europe.

A 2 speed NATO would have been perfect and all the aforementioned leaders were open to it. But the US didn't want that. They wanted more war and that's what we have.

They wanted Russia to just grovel and give up territory whenever NATO wanted more. If Russia granted independence and NATO membership to Chechnya , they would just move onto the next territory.

A country is either an empire or part of someone else's. Russia was too big to fit into the EU or nato. It was never going to happen.

But we have laughable fools like Panama skat actually believe it's all a morality play. If only the Russian leadership was nicer guys , then Russia could join the EU and NATO and it would be all one big happy family.