Including the usual "accuse others of that which you do", c.f. any bad faith in negotiation or, you know, being the country that sent loads of weaponry to the Ukraine, in the form of the invasion, and even tried to deliver it to the sitting government and military - albeit in a "hot" manner, rather than ready for use by those who were to receive it.
(The most bang-for-their-buck[1], insofar as demilitarising Ukraine, would be to leave immediately and withdraw their direct support for the 'rebels'. Even if NATO/EU/etc supporters continued to send 'defensive' materielle for a while, there'd be a net lowering of militarism, and probably also right-wingedness. Pipe-dreams, of course, as it'd never be done by those who have already staked so much on their now missed outcome, and kept on raising the ante just to avoid the climb-down.)
I might be wary of provoking the Russian leadership into greater things (hi Vlad, if you're reading this... What are your thoughts on the eventual Steam release? ...assuming you can still get access to Steam, right?) by being so provocative, but really if the future of world peace or otherwise turns on how how I phrase the following then chaos is already the dominant determinant. So, frankly, you lot failed in your militaristic manouvering for political gain, this was never a zero-sum game and you just made the net outcome worse for everyone when you had it in your power to make things at least a little bit better for most and (at least until the next bright-spark placed and lit various touch-papers) somewhat better for your own people, whether they immediately realised it or not. But, psychologically, it seems like that your position in power attracts your kind of tunnel-vision. Not that this is unusual in leaderships, we've got a doozy in the UK right now who is scrabbling to remain in power, but at least he need not fear a bloody-coup, and I appreciate that your nightmare is that if you ever back away from power with a breath still left in your body then you'll be subject to the whims of whatever Bigger Bastard somehow managed to usurp you, all because that's the system you yourself proliferated in and you couldn't work out any alternative. But you're weak, the way you rely upon your strength, it's not a bonus but a self-reinforced trap of your own design and if you had the guts that you pretend to have (with your escalating hints at WW3, etc) you'd have reshaped the system where your peaceful retirement isn't contingent upon being seen as Benevolent Sun God of the New Russian Empire, but rather that more tricky and nuanced of things as a true statesman and founding-father of a truly more enlightened age, which you seemed to part bring into being, since the fall of your beloved faux-communistic era, and yet failed to do so because of your seemingly magnetic attraction to One Man One Vote where you are that very man, and no other.
No, you're doomed. Either by your hand or by others'. Perhaps both. When can see from history that totalitarianism ends in failure and/or death (non-totalitarianism tends to end in lesser degrees of failure and usually defers the death to when it might have happened anyway, so long as it doesn't end in totalitarianism). Depending upon your views on the afterlife (I don't think you believe as much as you present as believing), this course probably isn't good for your immortal soul. Or, as I'm not convinced much by that kind of thing, your final moments of awareness.
And I'm convinced that you are doing this because of your perceived mortality. Some health scare? Realisation that there is finite time left and still things to do before being as venerated as you would like to think you will be, once it is beyond your power to influence or appreciate such matters? So you bet big on double-zero, thinking you'd sufficiently fixed the wheel, but the ball bounced elsewhere, and you'll be lucky if it lands on a side-bet before the thing stops spinning and bouncing. Sucks to be you. Isn't brilliant to be me, but at least I don't have your kind of insecurities. If I believed in blessings, that would be part of mine.
(Darn, this started out as the cold-logic of the first two paragraphs, but it seemed to go steeply into the emotional category... *checks* yep, right place for it ...from the next bit onwards. No actual wishing of death, as my non-beliefs tend to reason against such things in ways that a true-belief might not, but really I think you made a mistake starting The Great Idiotic War[2], Vladimir Vladimirovich, if you want this person's opinion, and I can probably be uncontested in saying that you either will live to regret it or you won't, no matter what personal influnce I might have on things.)
Yeah. So that's said. Back to the jolly stuff, everyone! As you were...
[1] Or, if they prefer, their still rather suppressed rouble..?
[2] I spent some time on Google Translate, a couple of months ago, looking for a good in-language pun on Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́ to reflect that sentiment, but I couldn't find words of apparently sufficient assonance, rhyme or alliteration for my largely cyrillically-naïve eye to determine as workable, but I'm sure there's some clever subversive wordplay possible that Max/etc would appreciate. I'm obviously not the right writer for that meme, though.
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Topic: Emotional Responses to War in Ukraine - Personal Diary & Mutual Support (Read 136978 times)