Comments by "Dale Crocker" (@dalecrocker3213) on "" video.

Whatever financial advantages the EU may bring (if any)they are far outweighed by the geopolitical impact of an artificially federalised Europe. Without the EU there would be no war in Ukraine, just for starters. Putin has no territorial ambitions, other than to maintain the integrity of the Russian Federation. To think otherwise is to fall into the trap created by US war hawks to protect certain financial interests within America. Donald Trump is not part of this cabal, which is one of the main reasons for the vicious campaign of denigration against him - yet another con-trick this channel has fallen for. That's three so far. The EU is a con-trick, NATO is a con-trick and Orange Man Bad is a con-trick. Being good-natured and wishing the world well is no excuse for such a degree of credulousness.
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Russia is not expansionist. Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt.
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@emm_arr Russia isn't trying to conquer another state. Putin has made it clear that it would be impossible and undesirable to rule Ukraine. The only problem is defining what Ukraine actually IS. The big mistake was setting the new country of Ukraine on the same geographical footprint as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. This wasn't a country as such, it was an administrative unit of the Soviet Union. Crimea and much and Eastern Ukraine had been stuck on to it for purely administrative reasons. They both have very substantial Russian populations and -perhaps more to the point - are vastly wealthy in terms of mineral resources, invested in and worked by Russia and by Russians for centuries. By joining the EU and allying with the west these resources (and we're talking trillions an trillions of dollarsworth) Ukraine would be removing these assets from Russian control - a control which largely existed even after Ukraine's independence. Putin's solution - for Donbass to become regionally independent and for Crimea to be recognised as Russian - has been rejected and he felt he had no choice but to go to war to keep hold of these areas which he regards as being essentially Russian.
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@emm_arr No. For reasons I have explained. He merely wants to take back Crimea and Donbass, which is a different thing. If you were to read the essay Putin wrote on Ukraine/Russian relations immediately before the invasion it would make his position entirely clear.
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@justinmillette9110 It's not a question of "right." Who decides what's "right" anyway? And where do you get this thing about "being deferential"? And the UN is a waste of space anyway. Russia invaded Ukraine for sound economic reasons. As I explained, the vastly profitable mining industry in Donbass has been developed by Russia for centuries. First salt, then coal and iron and now shale gas and lithium. In fact, it was probably the discovered of large lithium deposits around Mariupol a few years ago which brought matters to a head. We are talking literally trillions of dollars here. These resources are a Russian heritage and the idea of them being sold off to America is intolerable to Russia, as is the idea of Ukraine becoming its ally by joining NATO. If Ukraine had agreed to grant autonomy to Donbass the difficulty would have been overcome. Donbass's resources could continue to be channelled through Russia, with enough kickbacks to Ukrainian officialdom to keep them happy. But this doesn't suit America and its allies and so they have financed a bloody and needless and ultimately unsuccessful war in order to get their hands on these resources. That's just the way it is. Morals and "legality" and being for or against Russia don't enter into it.
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@anglonorse2943 Hardly a basis for reasoned discussion, is it?
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@anglonorse2943 But you have to say WHY it is wrong, and in what way. You don't get it, do you?
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@anglonorse2943 Who are you to say whether it is worthy of debate or not? Sounds to me as though you're running scared.
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@anglonorse2943 But it isn't propaganda. It's a point of view, and one which you seem either too afraid or too incompetent to refute.
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@anglonorse2943 Chicken or dumb, which is it?
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@anglonorse2943 My eyesight is good enough to recognise a chicken when I see one.
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@anglonorse2943 I'm not upset. Just contemptuous.
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@anglonorse2943 History is what happens in real life - not what is written down.
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@anglonorse2943 But you have to tell me me WHY. And it seems you can't.
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@anglonorse2943 I'm not saying you HAVE to, just that it might be a good idea for you to work out why you think the way you do.
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@anglonorse2943 Oh dear. This is very sad. Aren't you the slightest bit worried that you might have been brainwashed?
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@emm_arr Well it isn't. Over-expansion was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why would the Russian Federation make the same mistake?
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@justinmillette9110 Where can one find Russian propaganda these days? The first stage of the war, the SMO, was designed to destroy as much of Ukraine's army as possible, but on Ukrainian territory instead of inside Donbass. That is quite clear from the disposition of forces and the tactics employed. It had nothing to do with taking territory, merely to do with choice of battlefield. Force has been very much a last resort. Clearly, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR errors were made. It was a time of great confusion. If Minsk had been adhered to and Donbass could have become autonomous it would have prevented war. It's interesting you should mention Bilhorod. As I'm sure you are aware this part of the world has been under multiple ownerships over the centuries and there are many surviving anomalies. A solution to the present difficulty could well involve further boundary adjustments - but Russia keeps Donbass and Crimea. I don't think that is negotiable.
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@anglonorse2943 But I'm English and I don't know where to find Russian propaganda, let alone dole it out. I simply speak as I find after a bit of historical research.
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@domtomas1178 These analogies are really pretty stupid. All over the world bit of land go back and forth all the time. Obviously there must be some sort of statute of limitations, but trying to draw moral parallels gets us no-where, Each case is unique. Has Poland asked Russia to have Kalingrad back, by the way? Are there any Poles living there? Does Poland still get billions of dollars a year from its mines and industries and doesn't want Russia to sell them off to the Americans?
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@justinmillette9110 Sadly, domestic analogies don't work either. But just to play the game let us say that it was your father, not you, who was disinherited by your grandfather, (after he was duped by a crooked lawyer called Sam) but your side of the family still farmed the land in question, fertilising it and ploughing it and spending money on it and, naturally enough, selling the crop for profit. Then your cousins tell you that Sam has got his eye on the land and so they are going to give it to him in exchange for a Mercedes-Benz and a holiday in Cyprus. You are naturally annoyed. You know Sam cheated your grandfather, but you've let it go over the years for the sake of peace and because you are still harvesting the crop. You and your cousins manage to sort things out between you, but Sam then comes along and gives your cousins a whole heap of guns and tells them to run you off the land, and if they do he will give them more cars and luxury holidays. What do you do? Do you quietly give up your farm just because of some bit of paper your idiot, drunken grandfather signed thirty years ago? Do you hell.
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@justinmillette9110 That's the trouble with starting down the analogy road. So: the Russia that agreed to the border is not the Russia of today. The idiot drunken grandfather was Yeltsin. The Budapest Treaties no longer apply, because all treaties fail eventually and often are the cause of wars 20,30, 40 years down the line -as is the case with Budapest. Even after Ukraine's independence Russian interests continued to operate the mines and industries of Donbass, using Russian labour and Russian investment - despite the fact that Kiev's neglect led to a near economic collapse. It is the potential loss of this multi-trillion dollar resource - to be sold by Kiev to Western interests - which is the prime cause of the present war. The gunmen are NATO (predominantly the US) which in the years following the Minsk Accords of 2015/16 spent billions of dollars on re-equipping and training the Ukrainian army. Moscow and Kiev could have sorted this out between them and were on the verge of doing so before the West, using a clown (Boris Johnson) as an emissary persuaded Zelensky to pull out of negotiations with the promise of even vaster military support. There was a solution available in 2015. There was a solution available in 2021. That same solution will almost certainly be arrived at within the next few months and several hundred thousand people will have died to no purpose.
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Hooray! (I just felt like cheering.) That's telling 'em!
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@emm_arr Well, this bloke just did. And very well too.
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I can't help wishing they'd teach something other than the history of Nazi Germany in school history lessons these days. It does so limit the imagination.
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Very well said - although with Trump a the helm there is even a chance that America, Britain and Russia could all be friends together. Now wouldn't that be nice?
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