*snip*
As long as you guys keep blaming the West for how your own country deals with its neighbors, nothing is ever going to change. Other countries are
afraid of what their lives would be like as a Russian client state, based on history and other past examples. Your government blames the West for how other countries view Russia; where is Russia's responsibility for how the rest of the world views it?
Our politicians try to play up Russia as the lurking enemy of freedom, in order to do the same: distract the people from the decisions
they make that have negative outcomes. Reasonable people know that's bullshit, that Russia and the West are somehow natural enemies like cats and dogs, and go looking for the actual people responsible for their plight.
I get it sucks to watch your quality of life continue to erode, to watch things gets worse. But are you really going to place blame for a decade's worth of decline on the West? What about your own leaders? Where is their responsibility? Where is your responsibility for electing them, or letting them stay in power?
And honestly, how can you say the West prompted Russia crossing into Ukraine? NATO, the EU, none of their boots were on the ground before Russia's. And yet you blame the West for the fear others feel when they see this happen? I'm sorry, I just don't understand how you can lay your government's choice to cross into Ukraine on the rest of the world's shoulders. No one forced Russia to do anything. That claim to their hand being "forced" is the only thing that's keeping them from being universally labeled as the hostile aggressor in this situation.