Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/9202260
Vladimir Putin will spark a third world war if the Russian president is allowed to declare victory in Ukraine, according to the boss of the country’s biggest private employer.
Yuriy Ryzhenkov, chief executive of Metinvest, which ran the sprawling Azovstal steelworks that became the site of a relentless Russian assault at the start of the 2022 invasion, warned of the consequences of a Kremlin victory.
“I don’t believe that if Ukraine fails, Putin will stop,” he said in an interview ahead of the two year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. “The Baltic states, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia are the next targets.”
That claim is highly speculative at best. Russia hasn’t invaded anyone else in the last, what, 50 years?
You forgot about Georgia, Moldova, and Afghanistan… all of which Russian troops fully invaded (Georgia & Afghanistan) or at the very least sent core military forces to fight against in a primarily Russian-backed war (Moldova), all in the past 1 to 4 decades. Although in Afghanistan’s case, it wasn’t to take land or annex it or anything, it was just to overthrow the government. Still a blatant invasion though.
They’ve also stripped Belarus of most of its autonomy via installing a puppet government a few years after it gained independence, and have now effectively incorporated in into Russia in all but name via the Union State.
Azerbaijan and Armenia would have both likely been candidates for absorption by Russia in the future for various reasons, but that is entirely speculative, and the only ones which constantly are currently facing extreme encroachment on territory or independence by Russia are currently Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.
When the dictator and military leaders of a larger country are all talking about how the lands of their former domain (located in significantly smaller countries) are rightfully historically theirs and stuff, you know exactly what their goals are… It doesn’t matter if it’s Hitler, Mussolini, Horthy, Putin, or anyone else, their intentions are clear.
So they’ve invaded 4 places, all of which directly border them, in 40 years? That doesn’t seem very dictator-like or authoritarian to me. Why are we supposed to be inherently against former USSR abortion into Russia? Seems to me like it’d be a good thing for all involved
Bro you have got to be a jester or something, a troll account surely… either that or you drank the entire world supply of stupid juice
You lost all hopes of othere taking you seriously as soon as you implied Putin is a democratic leader, let alone outright saying “yeah, Russia invaded 3 bordering countries part of its former empire that it has historical ideological/nationalistic goals to conquer, took a chunk of their land and put it in the hands of rebels, has been in the process of removing the soveirgnty of a 4th bordering country for 3 decades, and invaded a 5th bordering country to overthrow the government and make it a puppet state of the USSR – BUT this surely isn’t at all like when Germany did the same thing with Austria, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland, or when Italy did the same thing to Albania, Greece, and Ethiopia”
Russia already had Crimea secured from their previous invasion of Ukraine many years prior (which happened after Ukraine deposed of their Russian puppet dictator in a revolution BTW), the outbreak of the more recent stage of the war had little to do with Crimea. They have used the Donbass as a nationalistic war goal towards Ukraine for a long time, to say that it belongs to Russia because there are a lot of ethnic Russians (which is how almost any border region with a much larger country goes), and now that they’ve started a war with that they’ve declared full intent to dissolve Ukraine as a soveirgn state and incorporate it into Russia. It is not about some strategically important areas, it is about continuing Russification and making Russia “what it once was” by absorbing neighbour states. After Belarus and Ukraine, Georgia is undoubtedly next – hell, the only reason Russia isn’t doing the same thing to Georgia is because they’re busy getting their ass handed to them by Ukraine.
Putin gets democratically elected, what other definition of democratic is there?
Why are you just assuming that Russia acquiring Ukraine would even be a bad thing? Ukraine was certainly more powerful as the USSR. The only people who it would be bad for are the current Ukraine govt. But as for the people of Ukraine, why shouldn’t they be part of the USSR again?
But please, keep telling me how reunification of USSR is the same thing as fucking WW2.