And in a smaller economy, which is one tenth of the size of the US GDP, those Russian arms manufacturers are far more important that in the US for the US economy. — ssu

In Ampthill, Bedfordshire, where they have a massive factory in my country, Lockheed Martin are far more important relative to the local economy than they are globally too.

So?

Apart from the obvious attempt at derailment, what was the point? We're talking about global influence, not doing a Geography project.

So the issue of war being a racket is a far more clear in the Russian case. — ssu

So is Cynicism — FreeEmotion

Is it? What multi-billion dollar industry does cynicism prop up?

if it's on my account — SophistiCat

It isn't.

And what does it translates into, under the circumstances? What policy prescriptions do you make (or not make) as a result? — Olivier5

I'm not writing them all out again. I've already stated them, you opposed them with your knee-jerk tribalism, I pointed that out...now you want to avoid that whole discussion by pretending it never started. Fascinating though they are, there's a limit to the effort I'm willing to put in to play your games. It's entertaining to watch you dance, but if it takes too much to wind you back up again...

To think strategically or morally about this war doesn’t require you to be Russian, nor to talk to Russians. So your question is grounded on a non-sequitur. — neomac

I didn't say it was 'required' did I? I said I had no reason to. Not liking cricket gives me no reason to play cricket. Is that the same as saying I'm 'required' to like cricket in order to play cricket?

if you can not affect directly their choices (assumed you could just by being Russian or speaking to Russians), you could affect them indirectly by promoting western governments’ decision to support Ukrainian defense — neomac

Only if I thought it would help. If I though it would cause more harm, how would that be the moral option?

it sounds contradictory wrt your further claim: this is a discussion forum, so we can discuss things just for the sake of discussing them. — neomac

Again, me finding no reason to and me being unable or not allowed to are two different things.

And what are the moral principles or the moral values wrt which the West has infringed and therefore should bear responsibility for the Russian aggression of Ukraine? — neomac

These have been discussed at length, but recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral.

if the West did something morally wrong, why isn’t the West being attacked by the Russians — neomac

Wtf? I assume it's because Putin is an immoral turd and would probably applaud them.

That people are treating Putin as a psychopath should be welcome if it advances western strategic interests, unless of course you are against advancing Western strategic interests. Are you? — neomac

Yes.

what do you mean by “legitimate security interests”? — neomac

An interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric).

why are you so convinced that Putin acted primarily out of security concerns? — neomac

I'm not.

How can a non-nuclear power as Ukraine constitue a threat for a nuclear power like Russia in the first place? — neomac

By serving as a base for much better equipped allies like the US.

BTW if he so afraid of Russian national security why is he so quick and vocal in menacing the West to escalate to a nuclear war when nobody in the West or Ukraine is planning to attack Russia? — neomac

Because his concern is not an attack on Russia. A land invasion of one's country is not the only thing that comes under the umbrella of a security concern, obviously. Do you think anyone is going to invade the US? Clearly not. Do you think the US has legitimate security concerns?

why did he limit his demands to the denial of NATO membership to Ukraine, and the acknowledgement of the annexation of Crimea as well as the independence of a couple of Ukrainian regions instead of going for the annexation of the whole Ukraine or at least for a pro-Russian regime change to ensure that no other competing power could turn Ukraine against Russia? — neomac

Because those demands were more likely to be met.

economic ties would have been sufficient to preserve peaceful relations between EU and Russia — neomac

Exactly. It was Yanukovych's attempts to create just such a relationship and the EU's refusal to countenance it that acted as one of the precipitators of this whole thing.

all he’s proven with his war against Ukraine is that he’s willing to take military action if lobbying doesn’t suffice to reach his ambitious strategic goals that certainly go beyond national security concerns. — neomac

Not sure what the 'all' is doing there.

For people on the outside, the depth of denial, absurdity and cynicism in the official rhetoric may be difficult to fathom, but here is just one example. One of the principle justifications for the war (which cannot be called a war) was and remains the "genocide" of the Russian people in the separatist Donbass. Apparently, the public is more receptive to this narrative than to others, and so propagandists put it front and center (for example, when talking about the not-war to schoolchildren). But contrary to what one might expect, this narrative was almost entirely absent from the public sphere until about two weeks before the invasion, when suddenly it was being blasted out of every TV set. Neither actual numbers nor the record of news stories and official statements over the past several years bear it out. And yet it appears that this jarring switch went unnoticed by many. In true Orwellian fashion, a sizable number of people (according to some surveys) now believe that a genocide has been ongoing all these years. — SophistiCat

In other news - what 'people on the outside' just don't realise about the French is that they wear onions around their neck, berets and stripy jumpers, and they're all called Jaques

...

Who would the "people on the outside" be? You really can't think of anything, anything at all from the Western World which nobody had heard of one day but was global issue number one the next simply because of press or social media coverage?

I don't object to Russia being held to these standards, but this underhand insinuation in it all the the West stands above that kind of skulduggery is little short of propaganda itself.

When was the last time you saw a Yemeni flag above one of our public buildings?

On Wednesday, a donor conference in Geneva aimed at raising funds for Yemen ended with world leaders pledging little more than a quarter of the target amount.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said he was “deeply disappointed”. “More people are in need this year in Yemen than in 2021. More lives will be lost. More children will starve … yet somehow, we will have less money to support them. World leaders must not allow this to happen.

“The people of Yemen need the same level of support and solidarity that we’ve seen for the people of Ukraine. Especially as the crisis in Europe will dramatically impact Yemenis’ access to food and fuel, making an already dire situation even worse. We need to step up now to avoid thousands more dying from hunger.” — https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/17/aid-agencies-race-food-to-ukraine-cities-kyiv-kharkiv-dnipro

Just in case anyone is in any doubt as to the nature of US 'help'.

My job [in Syria] is to make it a quagmire for the Russians — US envoy James Jeffrey

You mean protect innocent Syrians surely?

"...sorry, who are the Syrians?"

I'm saying you can support whoever you want to. — Olivier5

I didn't need your permission, but thanks.

don't assume that there is one good choice and only one — Olivier5

Is there some evidence of my having done so?

Your choice of supporting no one is in no way morally superior to another choice. — Olivier5

I'm not 'supporting no one', I'm supporting Ukrainians, and Yemenis, and Iraqis, and Russians... I'm supporting the people who I think would be harmed by the policy I'm opposing.

To be fair, not supporting American imperial designs is indeed a line of action, much like not supporting Israeli businesses because Israel is committing genocide in Palestine is a line of action. — StreetlightX

True...ish. I think that an important distinction might be drawn between simply not being involved (I'm currently not warmongering), and being opposed. The latter requires that I act, according to my capacity, to prevent it.

I'd probably prefer to reserve the 'line of action' epithet for active resistance to a policy to distinguish it from passive lack of involvement. But I take your point...

Typical non-answer.

More precisely, strategic choices may or may not involve chosing one side against another. — Olivier5

It was perfectly precise as it was. People support strategies not sides, in contrast to you entire position here that anything short of wholehearted approval of Western strategy must therefore be 'siding with Putin'.

Logically, it does. You are prescribing lines of action that do not involve X, as being better than lines of action that do involve X. — Olivier5

Don't do X is not a line of action. It's a line of inaction. No one who isn't just trying to weasel out of being wrong would define 'not drinking my tea' as an action

The choice for other people, such as Europeans, Americans, Aseans, Africans or Oceanians, as organized politically through states, is about which side to chose, if any. IOW should Peru or the Netherlands help Ukraine, or rather help Russia, or stay neutral? Or help both??? If they wish to help, how should they do so most effectively without compromising other interests? Etc. — Olivier5

Your final sentence undermines your entire argument. People are making choices about strategy, not sides.

But five minutes of consideration would have worked that out, as if that were the objective here.

Unclear, please rephrase. — Olivier5

"Don't do X" is a perfectly sufficient political position. It doesn't required a "do Y instead". I don't need to say what America should do instead of warmongering. Just don't warmonger.

If I say to someone about to shoot a child "for God's sake don't shoot!" It's not a counter argument to ask "well what should I do instead?"

This is Shireen Al-Adeimi talking about the war in Yemen. Sums up what's happening here quite well.

the ask here is not, “Oh, look at us, come save us from this big bad person, the Saudi Arabians and the UAE.” The ask here is to stop US intervention, to stop piling on to the invasion, the bombing, the starvation, this incredibly devastating war, an onslaught that Yemenis have undergone over the past seven years.

And it’s just mind-boggling to me that that simple ask, really, to just pay attention to what our own government is doing in Yemen, and to call for an end to that, is somehow less worthy of attention then calls to, in fact, save us and give us money, right.

as far as I'm concerned it's factual. I will post stories that draw attention to this from time to time. — Wayfarer

Why in hell's name would you do that? Do you think there's a soul in the Western world who doesn't know that already? It's the front page of every fucking newspaper, every news program and every blog. What are you trying to achieve by filling a discussion forum with it too. If I want news, I'll go to a news website. This one's for reasoned discussion. You voice an opinion, you give your reasons for it, its not show-and-tell.

you morally condemn the the Western hypocrisy (see the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.) and “warmongering” propaganda at the expenses of the Ukrainians. On the other side, you switch to strategic thinking mode when the subject is Putin, so the point is no longer to condemn the propaganda or the inhumanity of the Russian aggression of Ukraine, but to evaluate costs/benefits of a protracted war between Ukraine and Russia. And expect your interlocutors to do the same. — neomac

I'm not Russian, nor talking to any Russians. Why would I morally condemn them? This is a discussion forum, not a socialising site. You're not 'getting to know me better' by my writing a little puff piece about all the things I like and dislike.

Morally - People have implied (outright said in some cases) that 'the West' bears no responsibility for what's happening. I think that's morally wrong, so I oppose it. No one has said that Putin's is blameless, so there's no cause for me to write anything morally condemnatory about him.

Strategically - Again, no one has commented to the effect that we should not take America's strategic interests seriously, so there's no cause to write anything to the effect that we should. People have, however, treated Putin as if he were a psychopath with no legitimate security interests, I think that's wrong so I oppose it.

The mistake you're making in your analysis is thinking my comments here represent some kind of manifesto. I think that's a pointless approach to take. To be honest I can't really understand why anyone would ever start a thread here at all (though I am, of course, incredibly grateful that they do).

I tried to explain to you, that prior to your post, we already had a lengthy discussion on the matter in which the most reasonable posters among us concluded that the claim was an excuse to invade Ukraine rather than something serious. — Olivier5

Oh right, so just stupidity then. I can forgive that.

The unfolding war in Ukraine has taken a backseat to petty point-scoring arguments by some. — Amity

If you don't understand the relevance of some of the points to the geopolitical situation, you can just ask.

Alternatively, if all you want is post after post emoting how bad things are in different ways then I suggest you try Facebook.

What I think should be considered cheerleading was enthusiastically promoting the idea "Russia invading Ukraine has no truth to it and is only American media hype" or the idea that the US sponsors bioweapon labs in Ukraine. Or trying to argue (several times, actually) that Vladimir Putin isn't a dictator.

That kind of cheerleading has been seen in this thread. By various different people, I should add. — ssu

I'm sure, given the newfound zealotry, @Olivier5 will join heartily in the calls for you to back up such accusations with quotes. Or does your insistence only apply to some and not others @Olivier5?

Important points were made re. Mr Putin's own closeness to neonazis, re. the marginal representation in parliament of Ukrainian neonazis, or about the obscene absurdity that bombing nations out of the blue would be a legitimate way to free them from neonazis. — Olivier5

So? The argument was that you raised token mantras where they had no relevance in context. Their 'importance' is immaterial.

This neonazi accusation is one of Mr Putin's justifications for war, as you pointed out. 'Cheerleading' would be to relay it uncritically. — Olivier5

Indeed it would.

We have not done that here; we have discussed this issue in some depth and have critiqued the claim made.

Have you? — Olivier5

Why would I? As I said, I respond to the points made, that's what a discussion forum is for, it's not a fucking Facebook page for me to fill with my likes and dislikes. I haven't critiqued Putin's claims because no one here has posted supporting them. Why would I just blurt out random stuff I happen to think?

Yeah, there's been some weird moral arguments raised as truisms which I thought had been put to bed long ago. This idea that we should support the weaker party by encouraging them to fight, as you say, seems incongruent.

The other is "we can't negotiate with Putin because he's a (war) criminal". Odd, because we negotiate with terrorists and hostile nations all the time, even war criminals (for example Prime Minister's Questions during Tony Blair's incumbency - [/satire]).

Also, a new one, is that democratically elected leaders must automatically be right (if Zelensky asks for military aid he must know best). I mean, we're currently governed by a philandering clown, I'd prefer we didn't start to normalise the idea that he automatically knows what's best for us.

And finally, the most worrying of all, the transition of holding authority to account from a moral duty of a citizen to a suspicious act of mental instability, a slippage into 'conspiracy theory'...

It makes a change from 'mad' and 'idiotic', but it's not an improvement. When I was in primary school the insult of choice was 'spastic'. Ah, the good old days. — unenlightened

Halcyon days indeed! We could insult whichever mental condition we liked - what fun we had.

Fortunately for my tattered reputation, I used a lower case 'n' in narcissism (phew!), so I'm saved the pearl-clutching. It is, after all, a word simply to describe a person's non-pathological obsession with their own grandeur as well as the English for DSM-5 301.81

I’m wondering if we should not think of 40M Ukrainians to be some kind of homogenised entity, all the more it’s true for ~8 billion of currently living people that constitute (still in small part) humanity at large, what makes you think we are even capable to decide what it is in the best interests of humanity at large?! — neomac

Nothing. Yet that is a necessary task (unless you advise we just guess). It is not a necessary task for us to assume a single goal for all Ukrainians, there's no unit of agency there.

I think this is a frequently recurring issue here - people are drawn into the empire narrative, as if 'Ukrainians' had an objective that was opposed to that of 'Russians'. It's that very narrative that got us into this mess.

mainly for the following reasons — neomac

You seem to have listed only one (albeit behemothic) sentence. Does it contain more than one reason? I can barely decipher it, but I gather you're taking issue with the use of evidence? Perhaps you could be a little more clear?

Yeah, I was trying to convey to @Wayfarer earlier this very idea that propaganda is not just lies, but (more so, in my opinion) distraction, misdirection. I fear the point was lost.

do explain who cheerleads whom where, with quotes. Or just drop the accusation. — Olivier5

Sure. The first time I mentioned the word was in response to...

The leader of one of the largest countries in the world has just used the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine as a justification for war. If the best we can come up with by way of response is "shhh..." then we've lost all credibility as rational commentators. — Isaac


Rest assured that these allegations by a country waging war on its neighbour have been addressed here by rational commentators. Neonazis are not a significant factor in today's Ukraine. They are a more significant problem in the US or Russia in fact. — Olivier5

We were talking about Russia's rhetorical use of the Neo-Nazi issue and the most diplomatically strategic response, you blustered in with the tribal chant "there's no Neo-Nazis in Ukraine anymore!" completely ignoring both the context and the purpose of the discussion.

That - I stand by - is 'cheerleading'. Mindlessly chanting mantras supporting one side of a conflict without any relevance to the actual issue at hand.

The second time it was mentioned, in passing, was...

As for boethius, he wrote clearly about his moral preference for murder over cheerleading. — Olivier5


He wrote exactly what he wrote. The fact that you have to paraphrase rather than directly quote speaks quite clearly to your intellectual dishonesty. If boethius wrote so 'clearly' of such a preference, you shouldn't have the slightest trouble quoting him saying so. — Isaac

Here, you seemed not to disagree with the description at all, but merely the moral weighing.

Incidentally - on the subject of quoting, I note above a request for the use of a quote from you to clarify an accusation. A request you have yet to reply to.

And there's

Note that Isaac, StreetlightX and others are constantly contradicting themselves — Olivier5

Has the quote function broken? There seems to have been a flurry recently of posts referring to what I'm apparently saying without making use of it. — Isaac

If you're not prepared to accede to my requests from a fortnight back, I don't see why I'd be expected to trawl through to carry out yours.

...or just drop the accusation

Just stop lying. You don't need to. I am not cheerleading, you are not cheerleading, nobody is cheerleading. Okay? — Olivier5

cheerleading
noun [ U ]
uk
/ˈtʃɪəˌliː.dɪŋ/ us
/ˈtʃɪrˌliː.dɪŋ/
the activity of leading the crowd in shouting encouragement and supporting a team at a sports event. The activity usually involves dancing, chanting (= repeating a word or phrase), and special gymnastic movements:
Cheerleading combines a mixture of gymnastics, dance, and teamwork.
the fact of strongly supporting a particular idea or person: — https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cheerleading

And its use in context...

https://www.eurointelligence.com/column/the-cheerleading-has-to-stop

The point is that nobody is cheerleading. — Olivier5

For you, maybe. I'm quite happy with the claim and prepared to stand by it. For me, however, the point is very much the astonishing...

No need to get all nasty and insulting. — Olivier5

Your narcissism surpasses your contributions as a subject of interest by some margin.

No need to get all nasty and insulting. — Olivier5

You really are a case, aren't you. Tell me, when you wrote that, what went through your mind? Did you think of all the nasty insulting things you've said on this thread and think "I expect no one will remember", or have you actually blocked them out of your mind now your narrative has changed?

Use the quote function. — Olivier5

Again. Do you not even recall my having to ask you to do exactly that? Is it just some kind of willful blindness, or just a wild gamble?

On some readings, Putin believed he had no choice but to invade Ukraine. — Srap Tasmaner

You missed out the possibility that certain forces felt that they had no choice but to provoke Russia into this military operation as they say, and keep fueling it. — FreeEmotion

I'd also add that it's different for those in power. Vivek Chibber explained it quite well in an interview recently, so I'll borrow him...

the reason the working class does not spontaneously or routinely rise up and overthrow the system is not because it’s steeped in ideology, or that it’s fooled by culture, or that it’s suffering from false consciousness. The reason it doesn’t do this is because of the material constraints that the class structure puts on collective action.

The singular fact about the capitalist class structure is that it binds the two classes — capitalists and workers — in a very unequal way. Workers have to not only come together politically as actors but they have to do so against the much greater resources that capitalists have, and against the very real risks and the costs that they have to bear if they are going to overcome the resistance of the capitalists.

Capitalists routinely don’t even have to organize themselves. They have the structural advantage of the workers needing them more than they need the workers. Capitalists can literally sit back and wait for workers to come to them looking for a job. As long as the workers show up for work every day, the capitalists’ subordination of the working class is kept intact.

In that situation, if workers are going to come together, there’s a baseline level of risks and costs that they have to be able to absorb. Now, in order to absorb these risks and costs, the key component of all the things that have to come together is a cultural one.

Like I said, why bother with propaganda when you've got CNN reporting this stuff? — RogueAI

This is possibly the most hilarious one of the last page, so I thought it worth re-iterating. If there were propaganda, from what source were you expecting it? "Who needs propaganda when we have CNN reporting the absolute truth".

Propaganda - as I explained to @Wayfarer in his last post, is as much about what you miss out as it is about what you say. People don't have to lie, they can simply shift your focus away from what they don't want you to know.

https://fair.org/home/how-much-less-newsworthy-are-civilians-in-other-conflicts/

The Iraq War offers a clear contrast to Ukraine coverage. The US invaded Iraq on pretenses of concern about both Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and his treatment of the Iraqi people—pitching war as humanitarianism (FAIR.org, 4/9/21). But Iraq Body Count recorded 3,986 violent civilian deaths from the war in March 2003 alone; the invasion began March 20, meaning those deaths occurred in under two weeks. (The IBC numbers—which are almost certainly an undercount—documented some 200,000 civilian deaths over the course of the war.) The US-led coalition was overwhelmingly responsible for these deaths.

...

During the first week of the Iraq War (3/20–26/03), we found 32 segments on the primetime news programs of ABC, CBS and NBC that mentioned civilians and the war’s impact on them—less than half the number those same news programs aired about Ukrainian civilians.

Remarkably, only nine of these segments identified the US as even potentially responsible for civilian casualties, while 12 framed the US either as acting to avoid harming civilians or as working to help civilians imperiled by Hussein’s actions. NBC‘s Jim Miklaszewski (3/21/03), for instance, informed viewers that though “more than 1,000 weapons pounded Baghdad today…every weapon is precision-guided, deadly accuracy designed to kill only the targets, not innocent civilians.”

In Ukraine coverage, by contrast, these shows named Russia as the perpetrator in every single one of the 28 mentions of civilian casualties, except in one brief headline announcement about a tank crushing a car with a civilian inside (ABC, 2/25/22); that incident was expanded upon later in the show to clearly identify the tank as Russian.

Like Wayfarer said, there aren't two sides to every story. Climate change is real, and the reality of the Holocaust is not "Western Propaganda". — RogueAI

Not every story has two sides. Climate change denialists don't have a 'fair story to tell', nor do anti-vaccination activists, nor apologists for the January 6th civil insurrection in the United States. — Wayfarer

So guys... how do we spot one of these 'truisms'?

it is not for you to decide what is best for them, as if they were children who can't make responsible decisions about their own well-being. If they ask for help, you either give it to them or fuck off. — SophistiCat

Then it is for 'you' to decide isn't it? Your last sentence literally entails a decision. It's that decision we're discussing. If some Ukrainians (they are not, as I keep having to repeat, some kind of homogenised entity, they are 40 million diverse people), if some Ukrainians ask for help in the form of military aid, then our governments (and us in our role as their mandate) have to decide whether it is in the best interests of humanity at large to give such aid. It is totally up to us to decide what's best for them, that's the nature of the power relationship. We have the weapons they need, so we must decide whether what they're asking for is in their (and other people's) best interests.

The alternative would be the utterly ludicrous suggestion that whatever a democratically elected leader decides is best for his country must automatically be best for that country - as if democratically elected leaders cannot possibly be wrong about that. Is that really the line you want to take? That Zelensky simply can't possibly be wrong?

The material conditions, then, might come down to this: are the options more than theoretical? Can you come to believe that you do have real competing options, requiring a choice? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I agree, but, of course, there's more to believing one has a choice than merely it being materially the case. I think a greater part of what makes people feel they have no choice is that scarcity itself constrains one's opportunities to explore something as esoteric as an analysis of the probability space.

To put it a bit more crudely; if one is having to expend considerable mental resources on securing one's food and board, one is less likely to be pushing the apparent boundaries of one's prison, self-made or otherwise. Not until such time as food and board* become the very problem in need of some boundary-testing solution.

*I mean food and board here somewhat figuratively, I'm not literally bringing everything down to material needs, only basic ones. In Many places it's literal physical safety.

To be clear, I'm not simply saying ordinary people often have no choice because of material constraints - I'm saying the mere existence of certain material constraints act themselves as a constraint on the assessment of choice even where there might actually have been a material choice in some given case.

What are our options in a world with people willing to use violence? Here's a different problem: is it violence that we should be concerned with, or control? But is there genuine control that is not backed by the threat of violence? — Srap Tasmaner

I realise I didn't actually answer your question, though the answer you hint at is exactly the one I would agree with. It's about power ('control') not violence. MMA is violent. The violence we need to be concerned about is an abuse of a power imbalance, but such abuses need not always come in the form of violence and sometimes violence is the result not the means.

Like Leymah Gbowee? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, exactly.

Why the dismissive tone, Isaac? What if nonviolence works and violence doesn't? — Srap Tasmaner

If it does it does. I wasn't being dismissive of it as a method, more of its absence as a condemnation. I have the greatest respect for someone like Leymah Gbowee's methods, but I think it would be a mistake to suggest that no material circumstances allowed her that option, circumstances that may be denied to others. Again, this shouldn't be read as denying an ethical element, only in denying its usefulness when compared to an analysis of the material circumstances which propel some (not all) in the direction of violence.

Any of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine could have refused, could have not joined the army in the first place. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, indeed, and I'd cry out for them to do just that if I had the opportunity, but the more important question for us is why they didn't. If it was a moral failure, then why so many moral reprobates, what circumstances brought about such mass derogation? If the decision was too hard (for anyone) then we're back to material circumstances that way.

In essence, it comes down to this; if you can talk to that soldier, tell him he oughtn't fight in this war, listen to him tell you it's too hard, say he ought try harder...if, when he replies "but how?", you find you have an answer, then you have yourself a promising approach.

Me, I don't have an answer to that question.

Weather today cloudy with some sunny intervals. Highs of 12 degrees.

But earlier you said...

Trying to invade Ukraine and overthrow the Ukrainian government was totally delusional on divorced from reality. Yet Putin did it. — ssu

...and...

he is confined to a cabal that won't say anything against him. Now, if you don't have anybody challenging you, you really might go astray in your thinking. Especially when you start wars. I think the now noted exchange between Putin and his Intelligence Chief shows that people around him are terrified of him. Or at least, it seems like that.

The fact is that politicians start to believe their own lies. Believing ones own lies is then viewed as a sign of strength. — ssu

Now you're arguing he won't use nukes because it's not a strategically smart move.

It seems Putin swings from the empire obsessed isolated autocratic to the savvy, popularity-aware diplomat as and when it suits your argument.

said: PERHAPS he's got SOME decency left. — Olivier5

And that makes a difference to the argument how?

His spokeperson said yesterday that they will use nukes only in case of existential threat. — Olivier5

He also said he was carrying out a 'special operation' to denazify Ukraine. You believe that?

Perhaps he's got some decency left, also. — Olivier5

What? You really will drag up anything to avoid just having to concede won't you? Now Putin won't escalate because of his world-renowned decency? A minute ago we had to fight to the death because he was an incorrigible monster, now we're saved because he's too decent to use tactical nukes?

Suggest stopping the war by negotiation? - "Putin's a monster, you can't negotiate with him"

Suggest stopping the war lest it escalate? - "Putin's a decent guy, he won't escalate"

Anything, anything to just keep the war going...

You're not quite rational if you believe that anything said here can have any impact on the battlefield. — Olivier5

Then why...

You keep talking about Ukrainians as if they were the only ones dying, the only ones who can stop this, the only ones in need of surrendering... What about the Russians? Won't you advise them to surrender too? — Olivier5

...?

Ok, so you think the Russians can't be beaten.

Just watch. — Olivier5

https://www.rferl.org/a/death-toll-up-to-13-000-in-ukraine-conflict-says-un-rights-office/29791647.html

How many more are you prepared to reach while we "watch"?

beat me to it.