Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaymoss
I am 53 
Putin is a megalomaniac though. I do remember the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR. I guess we have more access to the press now with the net. I did not really take in much threat when I was young |
You old duffer. I’m a mere 50
. I guess we have the same formative experiences in the 1980s then. The thing is, Russia is not the Soviet Union. In part that explains Putin’s actions now. He wants to restore the Russian Empire. Mostly though it explains why he’s failed. The USSR was always destined to fall. Autocracies are inefficient, risk averse and prone to corruption. But while it lasted, the USSR was powerful.
Russia is not powerful. Even after 20 years of radical military reform, it failed to overrun a mid-level neighbouring democracy that was really only equipped on the assumption that it would be mounting an insurgency post-invasion. Russia’s army has been destroyed (what is deployed in Ukraine now is an armed rabble, not an army), and the whole world can now see that its navy and air force cannot operate within the range of Nato standard missiles. There is mounting evidence that the 4 Russian aircraft that were destroyed last week whilst heading towards Ukraine, but still within Russian airspace, may have been taken down by one of Ukraine’s newly installed Patriot missile systems.
Putin is a megalomaniac but he is old and likely also quite unwell. There are those high up in Russian society who are beginning to imagine a world without him and they are very unlikely to allow him to ruin that for them by allowing him to launch nuclear weapons, which would attract a devastating, albeit conventional response from Nato (the US has already indicated that it has described to Russia in some detail exactly how its military and infrastructure will be destroyed immediately following any nuclear escalation).