Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Russians Demand Alaska Returned to their Empire" video.

  1. To me it sounds like the usual, “Put out multiple narratives until no one can tell what’s true and everyone gives up,” alleged strategy from Russia. They may not even realise, or care, that they come off to the west as incompetent and scrambling? All that matters to them is controlling their own population with disinformation and confusion.
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  2. Jake, surely the most troubling demand from these Soviet era old timers was their insistence that they have the right and the need to change the government in Canada? I got that We Will Rock You soundtrack, and it slaps! I mean, it was genuinely awesome! Thank you, as ever. Slava Ukraine.
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  3. To the guy who withdrew his comment: There’s a lot of truth in what you say there, especially about the culture of Russia. Yet, the communist revolution wasn’t their only big grasp at a better world. You seem to be overlooking that it was Lenin’s betrayal of the new government, and then Stalin’s betrayal of Lenin that turned things sour in Russia? Not external forces. Then there was the fall of Communism; a revolution in its own right, within which we saw the old guard stage another attempted coup, driving tanks into Red Square. It was that failed attempt to restore communism that made Boris Yeltsin a star, before the world learned what a drunken degenerate he was, willing to bequeath the whole country to Putin (probably as much due to blackmail and threats as being too drunk to care?) and all of that put a seal on Russia’s destiny. And you’re overlooking the popular support on the ground that Prigozhin’s Wagner Mutiny generated? Yes, Russia has never known enfranchisement or democracy in its entire history, which is well over a millennia. But it is obvious to Putin’s already paranoid state that the Russian people want democracy for the most part: especially the young and educated. That is why they have such a stranglehold on web services, news media and any other cultural outlet they can grasp onto. Putin himself has modelled his entire career on Stalin’s, trying to emulate him in every way imaginable. The paranoia leads to heavy handed tactics, which leads to people hating their leaders, which leads to paranoia, which leads to . . . and so on, forever. Until the system becomes unsustainable again. Russia has had two major revolutions inside one century, and far more coup attempts. The biggest pressures on the Russian state are not external. They come from within. Putin just finds it convenient to draw the public’s attention to external forces. And it’s useful to blame the west for his own failures. Just as he does over the Ukraine war. Russia was never under any threat from the west, and he knew that better than anyone.
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