Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "The Aces up Putin’s Sleeve in Ukraine - VisualPolitik EN" video.

@iloncadaniela4270 Donbass war killed around 13,000 people. By contrast, Afghanistan killed around 300,000. And don't even get me started on Iraq. Good luck next time:)
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Putin isn't scared of Ukraine lol. Even this channel admits they'd win easily, just get bogged down in the occupation. He didn't want to invade in the first place. Cos this isn't about Ukraine, it's about NATO. Hell, it's not even about NATO as a whole, but America. Russia was getting sick of seeing American forces creeping closer to it every year. Doing nothing meant a slow death, until it was too late. The Russians wanted a NATO agreement to halt expansion in the 90s, but couldn't get one. So now they're finally forcing the issue.
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This story is true of the west as well, except for America which keeps surviving off of immigrants. Europe is also aging rapidly. Ultimately it's America that once again shows how blessed they are in every way. And I'm not praising America when I say that mind you, rather I'm pointing out just how damn lucky that country is - it's been blessed with practically every advantage you could ask for. Protected by two massive oceans, plentiful productive farmland, abundant resources, a relatively educated starting populace, and on and on. Americans like to think very highly of themselves, when really America is, in brain4breakfasts' words, playing on easy mode.
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It's funny how often you people keep repeating this, but not the equivalent story of Libya. Gaddafi also gave up his nukes. And guess what? He was dead a few years later. Not at Russian hands, but western ones. And you people demonize Iran for wanting nukes lol.
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@Independenceday95 Lol. Bruh Putin has higher approval ratings even today than Biden has ever had, and a big reason for that is precisely because of how much he's stabilized the country from the dark times of Yeltsin (who the west unsurprisingly loved). The guy may be autocratic, but the Russian people are also pragmatic. The country is in far better shape today than during the 90s. Ukraine may be democratic, but it's worse than Russia in pretty much every way. Besides, your argument is passe - Estonia already serves as a successful post-Soviet republic, yet Putin has been unchallenged by that. Ukraine hardly undermines him. There's only one nation that does - the US.
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@Independenceday95 As for the 2014 invasion, that's simply cos Crimea is of huge strategic military value to them. Keep telling yourself this is all about idealistic aspirations towards liberty lol. It just plays into the 'civilizing' narrative the west loves indulging in, putting themselves at the peak and everyone else yearning to be just like them. The world is more diverse than that, and plenty of peoples have made different choices. Not just in Russia btw. Nations organize as they see fit, not as you do.
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@BubbleGendut No, but they were developing them. Much like Iran today. And both Libya and Iran are enemies of the west
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@pgr3290 More NATO was happening regardless. You talk as if them doing nothing would've helped their cause - it didn't. Russia also spent nearly two decades relatively peaceable after the fall of the USSR - NATO expanded regardless. They wanted a written agreement that it wouldn't and couldn't get one, so now they're forcing the issue. Doing nothing is just a path to a slow and steady encirclement, until it's too late. You think Russia foolish only cos you take the wests' position as infallible and beyond question.
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@pgr3290 Doesn't change the fact that NATO expanded even before 2014, hell even before 2008. These were satellite states under the USSR, which threw the Russians off when it fell. Russia wasn't going to win them over and they know it. Their best bet was controlling them same way they have Belarus. Your 'strategy' is nothing but feel good idealism. Russia was never counting on these nations never wanting to be part of NATO, but wanting to be part of NATO doesn't make you part of NATO. What Russia wanted assurance of in the 90s was that NATO wouldn't accept them - it takes two to tango, as the saying goes. Ukraine had even been rejected years ago by France and Germany. That was supposed to be the norm. It wasn't, especially cos the US didn't want that. The US has always sought NATO expansion, and has steadily got its way. With NATO accepting more and more applicants as time goes by, Russia has simply decided it's time to put its foot down and insist once more on that assurance that it couldn't get written down in the 90s. Hell, Europe even seemed somewhat open to the idea for a bit. But this has always been about America, not Europe or Ukraine. And America is unwilling to play ball, especially since political pressure isn't simply something Putin has to deal with, Biden does too. Seen as tottering and ineffectual by most of his own people, conciliation isn't in their vocabulary. They'd rather Russia go ahead and invade Ukraine and get bogged down there - at the cost of the Ukrainian people mind - than concede.
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@johnclaytor9365 No, the American one. The Soviet one was worse, but also older. If you want to bring that up, I'll just bring up the US in Vietnam, which was even worse. And Donbass? Lol, I already mentioned that. Its casualties are FAR lower than Afghanistan. Ditto if you add in Crimea and Georgia. Nor did I ever claim that America's 'mistake' - lol, you make it sound like a deliberate invasion lasting 20 years was equivalent to slipping in the bathroom - justified Russia. But Russia's already under sanctions, for smaller wars. America never gets punished. You people happily take that for granted. I don't care for Russia, feel free to sanction them. But don't pretend you're in any way justified in doing so - unless the same or higher level of punishment is meted out to America for all its crimes, all you're doing is attacking your enemies, not serving justice. Lastly, if you want to start naming wars to try to paint Russia as the biggest warmonger, well two can play that game. There's a reason it's often said that the US has been at war for most of its history, and they're oft called a warmonger (by the whole world - see the poll results I mentioned above). Just taking post-WW history, here's a partial list - Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Savador, Grenada, Gautemala, Honduras, Iran, Laos, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan, Vietnam, etc. Have fun looking up all those interventions. And if you want to look at only recent wars, then I've already pointed out how the US' ones have been far more destructive than Russia's invasions. The real deflection here is from Americans. Or rather, the silence. They take all their crimes for granted, punishing other nations for stepping out of line but never taking any punishment themselves despite being such a huge offender themselves. If you want to pretend you're serving justice, ACCEPT it upon yourself first. Justice begins at home.
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@johnclaytor9365 The one who hasn't learnt is you. It's not the Russians who've drained themselves in trillion dollar wars, it's America. Russia's recent wars have barely cost them anything, only the American-led sanctions reacting to them did. Once again, you take your sanctions for granted, but they're hardly natural. If they were, the US would be under sanctions too. This entire thing revolves around America (via NATO) and you're a naive fool if you think this ever had anything to do with Ukraine. Russia's demands barely even mention Ukraine, they're all about NATO, and were even specifically presented to the US, making it clear who they have issue with. And don't bother arguing that now NATO is more enticing cos of Russian aggression - NATO had expanded even before the Georgian war, so being at peace achieved nothing. They wanted a written commitment in the 90s, they didn't get one so now they're forcing the issue. Russia, China, Iran, etc. are all responding to America's hypocritical hegemony that places itself in charge of the rules of the global order while simultaneously not subject to those rules itself. And you're going to be fighting again and again and again all over the world to defend that hegemony. Not that America has ever had any issues with waging war, especially in other people's backyards. Only the locals suffer, as usual the Americans never do. And if they lose, they always have the option of running away with their tail between their legs back to the safety of their continental homeland - and telling themselves that it wasn't a loss, they just lost interest lol. Russia, as the other guy said, is biding its time because it's far more circumspect about a war than America ever is. Only an arrogant hegemon like you would see that as weakness. America rushes headlong into war only cos their necks are never on the line, and they're used to never facing consequences for their warmongering.
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@johnclaytor9365 They're not just past transgressions yankie fool. Both the sanctions and NATO expansion are present issues pertinent to Russia. Looks like someone has a reading comprehension problem. Go back to school kiddo.
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What makes you confident this channel is all that different? Why're you asking them about the media? They're media themselves.
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@dustintacohands1107 Consider what came before. Doing nothing didn't help their cause. Russia also spent nearly two decades relatively peaceable after the fall of the USSR - NATO expanded regardless. They wanted a written agreement that it wouldn't and couldn't get one, so now they're forcing the issue. Doing nothing is just a path to a slow and steady encirclement, until it's too late. You think Russia foolish only cos you take the wests' position as infallible and beyond question.
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@pgr3290 Sure blame Putin lol. More naive idealism I see - "it's not the innocent ordinary folks that's the problem, they just have this big bad leader who does mean things that they never liked. The world is actually full of unicorns and rainbows (that match our preferred colors too!) and if we just get rid of the White Witch Jadis then everyone in Narnia will live in peace in accordance with Aslan's beloved law". I bet you say the same for the Chinese lol. Both Putin and the CCP have more public support even today than Biden has ever had (and yes, that's according to independent surveys, which have been done fyi). Both Russia and China have a very dim view of the West, and a very favorable view of each other. I'm sure next you'll fall back on the propaganda excuse, pretending that the poor innocent people aren't bad, just misled. Despite that you can find their people easily online, on this very platform (yes, Chinese too, firewall or no), able to see stuff like this. It's a way to infantilise your enemies, which works alongside the other tactic of demonizing them (both of which serve to invalidate their viewpoints in favor of your own) but has the advantage of catering to the self-image of those who like to feel like they're nice, compassionate people. It still takes your own perspective entirely for granted of course, and dismisses theirs, but it feels good. And so you hope that all that needs to be done for the Long Winter to end and Aslan's Law (the West's supposedly peaceful and fair global hegemony, that everyone else loves of course) to win the day is for the White Witch Jadis (Putin) to be taken out. Then all will be well once more. Lol. Comparing your take to a children's tale may seem insulting, but it honestly does come across as childish. The world isn't full of nice little westerners at heart who're just oppressed under big bad dictators. Here's a completely out of left field shocker for you - the genocide of the Rohingya that began a few years ago and led to the fall from grace of Aung San Suu Kyi in the eyes of West happened with the tacit acceptance, even if not active support, of the Burmese people, who've long hated them. She couldn't do much about it partially because her govt. was constrained by the pseudo-democracy she signed up for, where all security matters were entirely in the hands of the military, but also because she'd struggle to rile up any public support for them from a populace that thoroughly disliked them. Her hands were tied, the polar opposite of how you're painting Russia now. I'm not arguing that Burmese, Russians or Chinese are terrible people (Myanmar has been involved in a bitter civil war for all of it's modern history, an experience you could never appreciate, so don't be so quick to judge them), but that the Western perspective some sort of automatic, global NATURAL norm (that just so happens to be theirs, conveniently enough) isn't actually, you know, a norm. People are different, not little westerners at heart. They don't intrinsically wish to live in alignment with the wests' vision, nor intrinsically reject it. Or, in other words, diversity. Not the superficial kind you endlessly argue over in the West, limited to a bunch of preset surface characteristics, but real, actual, deep diversity in worldviews, values, beliefs and ways of life. And some of those things ought to be obvious. For instance, it's hard to imagine why the people of even a democratic China would be happy to go along with the US constraining them in the South China Sea. How does that serve their interests? It serves yours, but you're not Aslan. Which is to say that you wish everything will be solved by the fall of the White Witch aka Putin. Sorry to break it to you, but the world has never been that simple. We don't live in Narnia, and you guys are FAR from being Aslan. America being voted the greatest threat to world peace by the globe (yep, it's a Gallup poll - google it) is proof enough of that.
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@bigmedge No, your number is a gross underestimate. Hell even the US itself thinks so - Brown University, which is American, puts the figure at 250k, and even they say their number is likely an underestimate. As for your silly defence that they weren't all killed by Americans, that's irrelevant - they were killed cos their country was in the midst of a war. A war that was visited upon them by America. ALL war-related deaths in the region post-2001 are a result of the American invasion, whoever fired the bullets. Cos they wouldn't have happened had the war not happened. Not to mention that even your numbers make the Russian invasion of Donbass look positively tame. Have fun now trying to fish out a big number for that in order to make it look worse (even Wikipedia won't help, as the 13k number is what they use too). And then of course there's your reaching back into the further past lol. I guess I should bring up Vietnam then, which also boasts millions of deaths. Or the fact that the US, the country most constraining others from developing nukes, is the only nation in history to have ever dropped them on ppl. As for what the world thinks, why don't we ask them? We did. Gallup, an American polling agency ironically enough, ran a poll a couple years back asking people on every continent who they thought was the biggest threat to world peace. This was an open ended question i.e. people could have named any nation. It wasn't Russia who won. The US swept the results by a landslide. It wasn't even close - second place, which wasn't Russia either, was like a quarter of their score lol! So much for what the world thinks. Get out of your western echo chamber and actually listen.
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@umar7182 Russia is under sanctions for Donbass, which killed orders of magnitude less people than America in Afghanistan or Iraq. But America is not under sanctions. That's what it has to do with it. Hell the Iraq war was even globally condemned, and STILL no sanctions were placed on the US. The US is pretending it has justice on its side. It doesn't. It should be under even heavier punishment, but it isn't. As a rule, America gets away with more shit all over the world than any other nation on Earth. To be clear, I don't mind Russia being under sanctions for Donbass. I DO mind that America always gets away with its shit. Every. Single. Time. And there's been LOTS of times. The whole world has voted America as the greatest threat to world peace, and yet they pretend they're the champions of order and stability. And because they're the reigning hegemon, they get away with it. And tell themselves that it's because they're actually the good guys. Lol.
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@johnclaytor9365 Oh and speaking of global pariah, the US is literally the country seen as the greatest threat to world peace - by an American poll lol!
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@jasimmalik8078 Taj Mahal begs to differ. And that ain't a religious building either.
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@karlheinzotto3701 Fair enough.
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@johugra1 "Any sane man would see that all the West wants is to be friends and trading partners." - Lol! Have you SEEN the history of the west? Forget colonialism, even more recent history? Hell, the US retreated from one of its wars just last year. And their wars have killed way more people btw - over 300,000 in Afghanistan alone, compared to just about 13,000 in Donbass for Russia. You're more insane than you think Putin is. There's a long, long, long list of nations that contradict your idealistic fantasy. And the world knows it btw - Gallup, an American polling agency ironically enough, ran a global poll a few years ago asking countries from every continent who they thought was the greatest threat to world peace. It wasn't Russia. It wasn't China either. America won by a landslide lol! It wasn't even close - second place was literally a quarter of their score.
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@johugra1 No, your view of the west is distorted. You don't need to watch Russian propaganda, or even search in dusty academic journals. This stuff is public knowledge, even Wikipedia will tell you all about it. Here's a partial list of nations that the west has intervened in in modern history (never mind colonialism) - Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Savador, Grenada, Gautemala, Honduras, Iran, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan, Vietnam, etc. Have fun looking up all those interventions - and that's not a complete list btw, as there've been plenty of smaller operations, not to mention supporting various aggressions of other nations (even to this day - for instance, Saudi Arabia in Yemen). Latin America, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa (which is France's favorite playground) are littered with the legacies of western world-shaping. Tbf, the USSR did plenty of its own, but the west is hardly as angelic as you believe. Russia has 120,000 troops arrayed on the borders of Ukraine. Oooh, how scary. It is actually. But then America had literally multiple times that number actually IN Iraq in 2003. And a multiple of THAT if you go back to the previous Iraq war. I guess America must be led by even bigger dictators huh, going by your silly logic. And they were already in Afghanistan. And had been in plenty of other places at other times. Russia in Donbass has about 13,000 dead. The US has hundreds of thousands. Your female dictator bit was hilarious btw. Actually your whole mindset is hilarious. :p
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@johugra1 And I think your view of the West is naive. Nay, positively childish. And that isn't just me talking - America was literally voted the greatest threat to world peace in a global poll that's only a few years old. How you wish to see the West and how it's actually seen are two very different things. And the latter has far more basis to support it.
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@dustintacohands1107 Actually quite a bit of the media coverage has been about NATO. They typically disagree with Russia's demands of course, but even his detractors often understand that this isn't really about Ukraine. As for how this turn out in the end, we'll see I guess. I make no claims of knowing the future.
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@johugra1 Bruh, your naivety is based on nothing. Keep telling yourself that I just have a bad attitude and that's why I have the views I do. I've still spit out way more info to make my case, while you've done nothing but insist the west is all sweetness and rainbows apropos of nothing. The more you focus on my expression, the less you realize how truly empty your viewpoint is. There is nothing admirable about childlike innocence for its own sake. Clarity is about seeing the world as is, not as you wish it is. Feel free to preach to all the dead about how truly nice your people are. I'm sure they'll be eager to listen. Meanwhile, more dead might be made in Ukraine, and part of the reason for it is cos naive folks like you (both in the West and Russia) were willing fools for the people who knew how to use you, who made you buy into a fantasy. And as such, went along with their rhetoric. You can't change a world you haven't even seen.
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@wakannnai1 Russia part of NATO? Lol. That's a cute joke. NATO was formed to oppose Russia. That said, it's possible. So here's an idea - Russia may join NATO if the US is kicked out of NATO. How's that? Or how about an alternate proposal? The US can join the CSTO. Do you even know what that is? I sure hope so. And, well, they haven't. Why not? More importantly, why do you take the American position for granted? What're you so afraid of bro? Isn't their fear of Russia also self-imposed? After all, the US has never been invaded by Russia. I can guess your answer. But that's the situation. Neither Russia nor China is ever going to be part of a military alliance that's led by the US. Keep dreaming. Lastly, I don't think you know what gaslighting even means. If you did, you'd know you're in no position to use it against anyone in this comment section. Now run along and stop embarrassing yourself with supposedly bright ideas that're really dumb.
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@umar7182 You're describing America today, I'm talking about what got them there i.e. why America is what it is. America became the worlds' largest economy over a century ago, long before any of those companies existed. That makes for plenty of capital (of every sort) floating around, which feeds in to the conditions that allow for all those tech companies to pop up now (as well as prior giant industries before that). The US is itself sort of like its vaunted entrepreneurs - they tend to come from well-off backgrounds (rags to riches is NOT typical), and make more wealth off of that. By contrast, Japan and Germany are far more impressive, as both countries were raised to the ground and yet still built themselves back up. They also had far less advantage than America.
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@dedrickbroussard9797 All of that is true, but also old. Which is why America wasn't a superpower for the first century or so of its existence. But once the country was fully settled, it was a bonanza, far more so than almost anywhere else. It didn't take long. America became the worlds' largest economy over a century ago i.e. a generation or so after those issues were sorted. And back then America was highly corrupt and arguably an oligarchy (there's a reason Teddy Roosevelt is famous). Didn't matter one bit, just as that hasn't stopped S. Korea from developing. By contrast, Canada has also sorted out its issues, and yet they're hardly as strong.
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@SportZFan4L1fe Ah yes, iirc this is basically what France did in Libya some time ago. No faffing about like the Americans did in Afghanistan and Iraq, just go in and hit them and get out. And he could probably do it over and over if he wanted lol.
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I come from a nuclear nation. Which has nuclear enemies. Both of which we've fought wars with before, and one of which we've already fought a war with AFTER we were both nuclear nations. Don't overestimate nukes. They're a last resort, used only when you're practically dead. They aren't a panacea to security woes. It is perfectly possible to have a war with a nuclear power without any nukes being fired. In fact it's literally already been done, and we're still very much here, as are our enemies.
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