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Putin believes that Ukraine is historically part of Russia and it's independent existence is only tolerable if the country is firmly in Russia's sphere of influence.
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He believes the CIA engineered a coup that overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine and replaced it with a western puppet regime in 2014.
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He believes the modern nationalist Ukrainian state draws from the legacy of Nazi collaboration during WWII and poses a direct threat to Russian national security. Removing this particular nationalist influence is a key goal of the military operation, which he seeks to achieve through negotiation.
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Russia expressed interest in joining NATO during the Clinton administration but was rejected. This lead Russia to feel geopolitically isolated and cut off from the whole western project.
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He believes the west is obsessed with weakening Russia as much as possible and that NATO is nothing more than an anti-Russian alliance.
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Putin thinks China is now more powerful than the United States and more relevant.
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He believes our government is controlled by an entrenched bureaucracy that cannot be changed through elections.
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He believes the US and European Union are extorting taxpayers to fund Ukraine's war. He sees no reason why the US continues to support Ukraine.
Putin Interview Summarized
RUSSIAN SALT MINES 🇷🇺
Slyver, LatetotheShow: I'm upvoting both of you FWIW. Yes, there's a great deal of history we now have to clean up. Discussion (hopefully in good faith) should help with some of that cleanup. But I have to toss a curve ball, only for discussion:
What if you're both right?
I been brushing up against QED in following the Q thread (Quantum Electrodynamics). There's discussions that we're bouncing across changing history in deriving a better future with some of the unknown tech that's used against us (think Mandala effect; not everyone remembers an old movie happening the same way as it currently is when they saw it 30 years ago, yet the older folk specifically remember it all happening the same different way). Given a long enough timeline of these events happening, could history simply be different on this timeline??
My head hurts, I think I need some chocolate milk (reference Men In Black 3)...